After twelve years work and having nearly reached the halfway point in the last of our three courses, the realisation came to me that there's a single idea underpinning them all. In essence, this is to inspire in our students a way of thinking about being in the world that served our ancestors well for most of human existence, from the earliest stirrings of philosophical thought through to the early modern period. In essence, and in modern terms, this is the mode of thought we call animism, the idea that all things, from the smallest insect to the highest mountain, are imbued with spirit and sentience, capable of communication between each other and with us. This simple concept, that all things are inspirited, leads to acceptance of the reality of such diverse but related phenomena as the Faery folk, ghosts and gods. It is the way of thinking that makes possible what others call shamanism and we call Druidry.
Attacks on parts of it began with the rise of monotheistic religions that sought to limit human interactions with the spirit world to those sanctioned by scriptures and professional priesthoods. Paradoxically, these attacks achieved their greatest success with the rise of the scientific method, developed in Europe from the late 18th century, that denied both the old, animistic view of life and increasingly came to deny the monotheistic religions as well. By the late 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche felt justified in proclaiming that 'God is dead,' a phrase that became a rallying cry for many disparate movements throughout the 20th century.
Don't get me wrong. Science is wonderful. It has expanded human horizons immensely, cured countless diseases and created the computer on which I write these words. It has, however, had less fortunate effects, of which perhaps the most significant has been to divorce us from meaningful communication with the world in which we live and the myriad other creatures who inhabit it.
The underlying aim of our courses, then, is to merge the expanded horizons, sense of wonder and impetus for exploration embodied in science with an ancestral, animistic understanding of the universe as a place inhabited by sentient spirits and imbued with real magic. Rather than seeing these two as incompatible, I have come to regard them as twin projects, the combination of which is vital to enable humanity to flourish and to achieve our fundamental goals of true knowledge, real wisdom and ultimate enlightenment.
Many blessings,
Greywolf /|\
Tag: Philosophy
The Summer of Love 50 Years On: My Summer of ’67
Rye Grammar School was not a good place in which to be a hippy in that halcyon summer of 1967. While Dr. Timothy Leary, the high priest of LSD, was in the USA, encouraging the world to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” A. L. F. Buttery, the Old Etonian headmaster of my very English school, was telling me that “there is no 
room in an institution like a school for individuals.” While love-ins and be-ins flourished in San Francisco and ‘swinging London’ was enjoying the 14-Hour Technicolour Dream, the little town of Rye in Sussex remained a sleepy Tory backwater, rife with bigotry, prejudice and hypocrisy, and full of boys around my age who would, within a year, be proudly calling themselves skinheads. I was barred from the newsagents in Rye because I had long hair. The same social stigmata meant that I was frequently stopped by the police in Rye if I went out wearing anything other than school uniform. That certainly included the psychedelic shirt I made by taking a discarded white shirt of my father's and painting huge, brilliantly coloured flowers on it with felt-tip pens. I took to going barefoot and sitting on floors rather than chairs too. None of which endeared me to my parents, teachers or peers.
By 1967, I had been a pacifist for ten years. This came from watching playground fights between individuals or gangs of boys during my first year at primary school. I saw that the only results were that one or more children got hurt and fresh enmity and resentment were caused. Even at the age of four, it didn’t take much of a leap of the imagination to see wars as playground fights writ large, the difference being only the scale and severity of the casualties. Since I could see no positive outcomes to fighting, only negatives, I determined that I would never take part in acts of violence, a position I have maintained ever since.
I made sure I passed my 11 Plus exam so that I would go to the local Grammar School rather than the Secondary Modern because I assumed that children attending the Grammar School would be sufficiently intelligent to share my view of violence. I could scarcely have been more wrong. Whereas the Secondary Modern School had a liberal-minded headmaster, Mr. Rothwell, who employed like-minded staff and genuinely took an interest in encouraging pupils academically, Mr. 
Buttery’s overwhelming interest was cricket. If you were good at cricket, you were in for an easy ride. Not only was I not good at cricket, I found it, as I still do, perhaps the most tedious team game ever devised by humankind. ALF and I were never destined to get on. Worse than that, the Grammar School encouraged, or at least tolerated, two forms of institutionalised bullying.
Attached to the school was Leasom House Farm. Parents who wanted a Grammar School education for their children who had failed the 11 Plus could buy it by sending them as boarders to Leasom House. It also meant they were completely rid of their children during term time and could get on with their lives unencumbered. The bitter resentment this fuelled was exorcised by bullying day pupils, a sport indulged in by virtually every Leasom House boy. If there happened to be anything a little unusual about you, you were picked out for special attention and bullied on a daily basis. This applied to pupils who wore glasses, suffered from asthma, or, in my case, had long hair, a deep objection to wearing school uniform and was a pacifist. Discovering the latter was taken by the bullies as carte blanche to bully me as much as they liked, knowing I would never hit back. Fortunately, I was a lot more intelligent than the bullies and therefore able to talk my way out of most potential violence.
A lot of the bullying directed against me came not from fellow pupils, however, but from teachers. The Grammar School seemed to attract teachers with a pathological hatred of children, especially ones who were unusually bright and questioned 
authority. Think Lindsay Anderson's If... Slaps round the head were daily occurrences, being caned across the hand less frequent. There was a history teacher whose methods ranged from the casual slap across the back of the head, through twisting and pulling the hair by the ear to nipple-twisting, the latter being particularly excruciating. The PE teacher preferred to administer punishment with one of his large plimsolls rather than the flat of his hand. On cross country runs, he would ‘encourage’ asthmatic children over farm gates by whacking them across the buttocks with this item of footwear. I think it was in 1967 that this man pinned me to the wall in a corridor, put his face close to mind and asked, "Don't you mind people thinking you're a freak?" I replied, "No, sir. I am one." This confused him so much that he let me go without another word.
The environment in which I experienced the Summer of Love was thus one of daily brutality five days a week, alleviated at weekends by taking the train to Hastings and roaming its back streets or seafront alone. There too, I was often stopped by the police for being in possession of long hair without a license. Since my father was around at weekends, I got out of the house as much as possible. He objected strongly to my long hair, weird attitudes and interest in music and art. He regarded them, and me, as a waste of space, and told me so whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Despite, or possibly because of, the tribulations of home and school, I drew huge comfort from what was happening in the rest of the world, fed to me through newspapers, the radio, television and, perhaps most importantly, through the music of the time. I had been a Beatles fan since the release of ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 and had watched them develop from loveable Liverpudlian mop-tops into thoughtful individuals who were one of the driving forces of popular culture worldwide. August 1966 saw the release of the ‘Revolver’ album, featuring the deeply psychedelic tracks, ‘I’m Only Sleeping,’ ‘Love You To,’ and the awesome, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ an aural 
assault unlike anything put on vinyl before, with its dreamlike lyrics, backward tape loops and sitar all merging into a rolling, crashing wave of sound. “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream – it is not dying...”
Along with the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘19th Nervous Breakdown,’ the Yardbirds’ ‘Shapes of Things,’ the Beatles’ ‘Rain/Paperback Writer’ and others, here was a new music that demanded you not just listen to it but to immerse yourself within it and be swept along by it to other head spaces. To my ears and mind, it was utterly beautiful, magical and transcendant.
1967 kicked off with the Beach Boys’ extraordinary ‘Good Vibrations’ riding high in the UK singles chart: “When I look into her eyes, she goes with me to a blossom world...” The chart for late January that year also included Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew and Son,’ the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Hey Joe,’ Cream’s ‘I Feel Free,’ and Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman.’ Yep, there was definitely something in the air, and it was being beamed into my ear via a little transistor radio tuned to pirate Radio Caroline.
Caroline played stuff you never heard elsewhere, with the noble exception of John Peel’s Perfumed Garden show on Radio London. It was on Caroline that I heard three singles that, for me, still encapsulate the English Summer of Love. One was Nirvana’s ‘Tiny Goddess,’ released in July. That was followed in September by Les Fleur de Lys’ ‘I Can See A Light.’ The third was again by Nirvana, and called ‘Pentecost Hotel.’ All three have a dreamlike quality that lifted me into a beautiful place back then, and continue to do so now.
These bands, and others of the period, were clearly beginning to realise that music has the ability not only to move the emotions, effecting hearts and minds, but to actually shift the consciousness of the listener. How conscious this was on the part of the musicians, I don’t know, but it certainly produced some of the most extraordinary music of my lifetime.
The apotheosis of the music of that golden era was, of course, the Beatles’ ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ released on June 1st, 1967. I first heard it, weirdly enough, at my school, which happened to have an open day that coincided with the album’s release. I was too poor to afford full-priced albums, but a WWII bomb shelter in the school grounds had been converted into a sort of psychedelic dungeon for the day, complete with primitive light show, a 6th former had brought in a copy of Sgt. Pepper, and the first chords of the album were sounding just as I wandered in to see what was happening. I stayed to listen to the whole of both sides, culminating in one of the most famous piano chords on record, reverberating like a nuclear explosion at the close of a psychedelic trip set to music. I was dumbfounded. I could barely speak.
John Peel’s Perfumed Garden show was another oasis of bliss. Broadcast from 12 midnight until 2 o’clock in the morning, I used to listen to it under the covers with the little transistor radio clamped to my ear. It was not just the album tracks, or 
whole albums that Peel played, by Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and the rest, it was the poetry readings from Roger McGough, the Winnie-the-Pooh stories Peel read between tracks, the references to the Dibblers who sat on toadstool seats and just the whole atmosphere of magical wonder conjured during those two hour sessions. This, of course, came to an end on August 14th, 1967, when Harold Wilson's Labour government shamefully introduced the Marine Offences Broadcasting Act that made the pirate radio stations illegal and led to the BBC setting up it's insipid, tightly regulated, Radio 1 as an extremely poor substitute.
Perhaps my reaction to what was happening in music and popular culture at the time was partly driven by the circumstances I was living with. We lived in poverty, in a shack with a leaky roof and cracks in the walls where, for the first years of my life, we didn’t even have running water, relying instead on a rain tank in the garden. Bullied on a daily basis by teachers and fellow pupils, my father adding his unconcealed dislike of me to the mix at weekends, it was hardly surprising I should look for any avenue of escape that was offered and, given my proclivities, music, art and literature were obvious ones to latch onto.
It was more than that though. My innate pacifism gave me an automatic sympathy with the message of ‘peace and love’ that was in the air, and with the growing global protests against the American war in Vietnam. It was more than that too. Since early childhood, I had been fascinated by the concept of other worlds beyond the physical. This was spurred by disturbing visions I had in the state between waking and sleeping, by vivid, often terrifying, dreams, and by a strong sense that there were discarnate entities all around us that were capable of interfering in our lives. Whenever I tried to speak of these things to anyone, they dismissed them as over-vivid imagination and, more often than not, warned me that to take an interest in them was unhealthy and probably a sign of madness.
My first signs of possible salvation came from American comic books. I was lucky enough to discover Jack Kirby’s work for Marvel Comics about a month before the debut of ‘The Fantastic Four’ in 1961. The FF acted like a family should, rather than like mine actually did. Sure, they had fights, but they were quickly forgotten and, when the chips were down, they were always there for each other. Kirby debuted his take on Norse mythology in 1962 in the pages of ‘Journey Into Mystery’ where he introduced us to ‘The Mighty Thor.’ This gave me my first glimpse of 
paganism. Things heated up considerably when Kirby starting producing full-page portraits of Odin, the All-Father. Unlike the Christian God, who seemed both nebulous and mean-spirited, Kirby’s Odin was a god of stocky build and awesome power and presence, yet forgiving of his children and not the least prone to unleashing plagues on entire populations. By 1967, I had begun to pray to Thor every Thursday morning, and to ask him to send cooling breezes whenever it got too hot when we were excused classes to watch cricket matches or, in my case, to surreptitiously read a book while supposedly watching cricket matches. He always obliged, providing my first indication that pagan gods are real (whatever ‘real’ means).
July, 1963, saw the first appearance of Doctor Stephen Strange in ‘Strange Tales’ 110, created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, based on an earlier character, Dr. Droom, created by Jack Kirby. No one drew other worlds like Steve Ditko, and those he conjured up for Dr. Strange were my first indication that there might be other people in this world who shared my interest in exploring these realms that existed 
alongside our own. The good Doctor himself learned how to project his astral body by studying with an ancient sage in the Himalayas. Since I frequently used to fall out of my body whilst trying to get to sleep at night, I found this particularly interesting. Given the bizarre experiences I had as a child, the fact that Strange handled similar weird forces with the aid of magic was both inspiring and hugely encouraging, as was the fact that he could move in and out of alternate dimensions at will. By 1967, his stories were being handled by another excellent artist, Marie Severin, and the tales remained as cosmic as ever.
Through comic books first, and then through music, I realised I was not completely alone, and perhaps not even entirely insane. In 1967 in particular, the blanket coverage given in the media to the hippy movement gave me the feeling that, far from being alone, I was actually part of a world-wide revolution drawing the world away from war, authoritarianism and hatred, towards a peaceful anarchy in which people exchanged flowers rather than bullets and made love, not war.
On first hearing Sgt. Pepper, I was particularly impressed by the George Harrison track, ‘Within You, Without You,’ so much so that I bought a budget priced LP of Indian classical music and began to explore Hindu philosophy, so far as limited resources allowed. This track, perhaps more than any other, in combination with what I had gleaned from the Mighty Thor and Doctor Strange, pitched me headlong into the spiritual exploration that was to become the keystone of my entire existence, leading ultimately to founding the British Druid Order.
The very real sense of being part of a global community founded on peace and love enabled me to survive the abysmal days at Rye Grammar School and the painful tensions of home life, and gave me the confidence to walk out of both in the middle of the spring term of 1969. By then I had discovered The Incredible String Band and the mingled joys and sorrows of sex and drugs, but that’s another story. In the summer of ‘67, it was enough simply to know that I was not alone but that there were many, perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people in the world who saw life in much the same way as I did…
It was a time of unbounded optimism, when anything seemed possible, even that love might conquer the world, causing coercive governments to fall and peaceful cooperation between people take their place. It saddens me when, as now, large parts of the world seem strangely bent on sliding back into repressive authoritarianism, fuelled by paranoia, as we are increasingly under surveillance by our own governments, while those same governments seek to persuade us that all our problems are caused by external agencies, and where Western democracy, always something of a sham, has become both a laughing stock and a reason to weep.
And yet, despite Trump, Brexit, Daesh, Front Nationale, AfD and all the rest, the music, art and literature of the late 60s, and of 1967 in particular, still speaks to my heart across the decades bringing joy, a sense of wonder, and renewed optimism. Let us, therefore, continue to sing, speak, and make art, music and literature to convey the message of peace and love to the world because, as George Harrison sang, “with our love, we could save the world, if they only knew.”
The Summer of Love, 50 Years On: Part Three: Sunshine Superman
Donovan Leitch
is a forgotten superhero of ‘60s music, so deeply attuned to the era that when its core messages were abandoned by mass media and fashion in the 1970s, he was abandoned with them. In the late ‘60s, however, he was troubadour to the court of rock royalty, courted by Bob Dylan and friends with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He also produced some wonderfully innovative music that was ahead of the curve of most musicians of the time. His late 1965 LP, ‘Fairytale,’ contains two tracks, ‘Sunny Goodge Street’ and ‘Candyman,’ that overtly reference cannabis use. His classic single, ‘Sunshine Superman
,’ released in December 1966 though recorded a full year earlier, was still at no. 3 in the UK singles chart in the first week of 1967. Both its sides reference LSD, the B-side being a remarkable, driving slice of prime early psychedelia called simply ‘The Trip.’
The opening lines of ‘Sunshine Superman’ are:
"Sunshine came softly through my window today
Could've tripped out easy but I've changed my ways.”
This is a reminder that Donovan was not only one of the first UK musicians to embrace LSD as a means of spiritual exploration, he was also among the first to publicly abandon it in favour of transcendental meditation.
The last verse of the song references two DC comic book superheroes:
"Superman or Green Lantern ain't got nothin' on me,
I can make like a turtle and dive for your pearls in the sea,
You you you can just sit there a-thinking on your velvet throne,
About all the rainbows that you can have for your own...”
Prior to the mid-’60s, superhero comics had been considered disposable fodder fit only for pre-adolescent boys with juvenile power fantasies. This began to change when comics legends, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, introduced new kinds of superheroes at Marvel Comics. Kirby’s Fantastic Four feuded like a real family, Ditko’s Spider-Man was the kind of geek who might previously have scraped by as a teenage sidekick to a ‘proper’ superhero. Kirby’s Thor was a god of Asgard sent by his father, Odin, to walk the Earth, while Ditko’s Doctor Strange was an astrally projecting, spell-casting magician, a veritable ‘Master of the Mystic Arts.’ The comic book geek in me can’t help but note that Donovan refers to two DC heroes in the song, saying that they “ain’t got nothin’ on me.” This could be a recognition that, in the mid-’60s, the cool kids were all reading Marvel Comics with their more relateable characters and superior art. Incidentally, Kirby's Thor was my introduction to Paganism, while Ditko's Doctor Strange introduced me to many core concepts of ritual magic.
Suddenly comic books were being read and enjoyed by college students. Donovan was, I believe, the first musician to refer to this phenomenon, recognising that, for people in their teens and twenties, these colourfully costumed super-beings with their god-like powers were increasingly taking the place once occupied by the gods of more ancient mythologies. In the last verse of ‘Sunshine Superman,’ he also shows clear recognition of the fact that the popularity of superheroes was largely driven by a feeling that we could become them or, as is the case here, exceed them, by expanding our consciousness. This is the essence of what anthropologists now like to call ‘shamanism.’
Donovan, in common with other musicians of the era, perhaps more than most of them, recognised the power of music to alter perceptions and devoted his art to putting out ‘good vibrations’ into the world. This is why, 50 years on, his music still resonates, still calls on us to excel, to pursue those rainbows for the ones we love, to become the superheroes of our own life stories.
The Summer of Love, 50 Years On: Part One
“It was fifty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught a band to play ...”
I was fortunate enough to turn fourteen in April 1967, just in time for what became known as the Summer of Love, the high point of the hippy movement. The central philosophy of that movement is the unarguable one that if people were nice to each other rather than doing each other down or beating each other up, the world would be an enormously better place. This was more pithily summed up in the slogan of the time, ‘Make Love, Not War.’
The other great slogan of the hippy era was ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.’ The message here is to ‘expand your mind through meditation and/or the use of hallucinogens, particularly Cannabis, LSD, Peyote, Mescaline or Psylocibin, allow these to open your mind to layers of reality beyond the physical, then follow the promptings of what you find to step aside from the culture of consumerism and personal greed and create a new society based on shared values of peace, love and understanding.’
Although I would argue that the hyping of hallucinogenic drugs in the late 1960s as a ‘short-cut to God’ was naively optimistic, the rest of the message again holds true and has withstood the test of time.
The Summer of Love was followed by 1968’s year of global revolution as what had been the ultimate pacifist movement was infiltrated by promoters of violence, while governments around the world realised that they could force peaceful demonstrators to resort to violence by having the police and the military launch increasingly violent attacks against them. Any hint of resistance from a single protestor could then be used by government forces as an excuse to further increase their own levels of violence. This is a tactic still in use today, enabling increasingly oppressive regimes around the world to maintain control over their populations. While it is common wisdom that the 1968 riots in London, Paris, Tokyo and many other cities came close to toppling several governments, what has been largely buried by history as ‘an inconvenient truth’ is that what really terrified those governments was the global movement for peace that had preceded the riots. Governments understand war and violence and have ample firepower with which to quell riots. What they really don’t understand are peace and love, especially not when, as with the hippy movement, those core values are spread through the arts and with healthy doses of surrealist humour.
A hallmark of the Summer of Love was the ‘Love-In.’ Love-Ins were events that were simply announced rather than organised, on a principle similar to the ‘flash-mobs’ of social media, except coordinated almost entirely by word of mouth and beautiful posters. People would congregate at a chosen venue, normally a public park, musicians would play, dancers dance, painters paint canvases or people’s bodies, and everyone would have a good time. Naturally such events were frowned upon by the authorities, bureaucracies being notoriously incapable of tolerating the idea of people having good times, especially if they didn’t have a license.
Another hallmark of 1967’s Summer of Love was the extraordinary quality of the music of the period. This was the year that saw the release of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Are You Experienced?’ and ‘Axis: Bold As Love,’ the self-titled first LP by The Doors and its follow-up, ‘Strange Days,’ Love’s ‘Forever Changes,’ Cream’s ‘Disraeli Gears,’ the Moody Blues’ ‘Days of Future Passed,’ Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ and ‘After Bathing at Baxter’s,’ The Who’s ‘Sell-Out,’ ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico,’ The Incredible String Band’s ‘5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion,’ Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’ and ‘A Gift From a Flower to a Garden,’ Otis Redding’s ‘Live in Europe,’ Nirvana’s ‘The Story of Simon Simopath,’ Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew and Son...’ Well, I could go on, but you get the picture. It really was a golden year for experimentation in popular music the like of which has seldom been seen before or since.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the music of the time is the extent to which it both reflected and drove the global movement for peace. One of the key tracks of the year had actually been recorded over an unprecedented six months during 1966. Released in October '66, it remained high in the US and UK singles charts at the beginning of 1967 and did much to set the tone for the year ahead with its aural complexity and its lyrics that seemed to blend individual with universal love. It remains one of the finest singles ever recorded, a tribute to the extraordinary genius of its composer, Brian Wilson, lyrically assisted by Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love. It is, in case you hadn’t guessed, The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’ (see video below). Wilson has stated on many occasions that his aim with all the music of the Beach Boys was to put out good, positive feelings into the world. ‘Good Vibrations’ is the ultimate expression of that aim and still, to my ears, sounds as fresh today as it did half a century ago coming out of the little transistor radio I had permanetly clamped to my left ear. May it be heard again around the world in 2017 and usher in another Summer of Love to counteract the negativity that seemed to characterise so much of the preceding year. As The Beatles sang in the middle of 1967, "All You Need is Love."
So may it be!
Peace, love and all good blessings,
Greywolf /|\
Tooth & Claw: Druids & Other Animals
Many Druids and Pagans are vegetarian and vegan, a far greater proportion than in mainstream society. This is commonly on ethical grounds, with many rejecting the exploitation of animals by humans, whatever form that may take, whether for food, clothing manufacture, drug testing, or any other reason. There are also telling arguments that a vegetarian diet is much better for the planet than meat-eating. Despite which, even within Druidry, vegetarians and vegans are a minority, with most Druids eating meat, often locally and ethically sourced, though often not due to cost factors. Even meat-eating Druids, though, will usually have concerns about animal welfare and will happily contribute to, or act in concert with, conservation groups.
The last thirty years have seen an increasing acceptance of the concept of the Druid as animist, that is, one who sees all things as imbued with spirit, including not just humans and other animals, but plants and even apparently inanimate creatures such as rocks, clouds or stars. Seeing our human selves as part of an interlacing network of living, inspirited, intelligent beings that inhabit realms above, around and below us enhances our sense of the value of all these other lives. We see ourselves not as occupying a privileged position above, or somehow separate from, the rest of the natural world, but as a part of it. For me, this is a core aspect of being a Druid. This perspective of equality inevitably calls into question the over-exploitation of natural resources and the resulting degradation of our environment and our spirits.
The same time frame has seen an increased acceptance of the related idea of the Druid as shaman, in part meaning one who works directly with spirits, including those of animals. Many Druids who work with animal spirits have craft names that reflect this, including Bobcat (Emma Restall Orr) and Greywolf (myself). Bobcat was given her name by one of her teachers. Mine derives from a vision of a Wolf that came to me in a sweat lodge, transforming my spiritual life. I was subsequently shown that I could switch bodies with my Wolf spirit brother, experiencing for myself what it is like to be a Wolf.
Immediately after my vision, Walter, who acted as fire-keeper for the lodge, suggested I should find something physical to link me with the Wolf. This seemed incredibly unlikely. I was around 40 at the time and had never seen hide nor hair of a Wolf. However, the day after I got back from the sweat lodge, a friend invited me to a garage sale at his parents’ house. The first thing I saw on arrival was a large pelt draped over an old water tank. A closer look confirmed my first impression, that the fur was Wolf. The pelt consisted of six Wolf hides, trimmed to rectangles and stitched together as a rug. It had been in the house when my friend’s parents bought it in 1947. They hadn’t liked it, bagged it up and put it in the loft. There it stayed until the day of my vision, when my friend found it and added it the garage sale.
I told them about my vision and they gave me the hides. I removed the woollen backing, added a couple of ties and started wearing the hides as a cloak in ceremony. As a connection with Wolf spirit this exceeded my wildest expectations. The six animals who died to make that Wolf-skin rug came to me during the next Pagan event I was invited to, a venison feast hosted by Ronald Hutton. They became a pack under my Wolf alter-ego’s alpha male. I recognised my responsibility to them by ‘feeding’ them with regular ingestions of meat, despite myself having previously been a vegetarian. I wore them regularly in ceremonies. I also wore them to give talks, including some to animal welfare groups. Once I had explained the circumstances by which I acquired ‘my’ Wolves and the ways we worked together, there was never any question of our relationship being ‘wrong.’
A few years later, at a medieval re-enactment, I found a stall selling Wolf pelts, complete with faces, limbs and paws. I asked the stall-holder where they came from. He said they were Siberian and derived from a cull of animals that were elderly or sick. You can tell if a canine is sick from the state of its coat, just as you can estimate its age by the size of the pelt. The stall-holder was clearly lying or, being generous, was grossly ill-informed. This left me with a quandary: did I leave the pelts to be bought by people who might not honour the spirits of the animals who had worn them in life, or did I buy one myself, albeit at the cost of giving a substantial amount of money to a man who had, I was fairly sure, lied to me, thereby supporting a trade that involved killing healthy young wolves? I spent much of the day arguing the ethics of these options with myself and others. Eventually, honouring the animal’s spirit won out and I handed over the money, albeit with a prayer that the trade in Wolf skins would soon come to an end. International trade in Wolf pelts was restricted under a CITES agreement not long after, and I’ve never since seen a complete Wolf pelt, or even a tail, offered for sale in the UK. This is, of course, a good thing.
In 2012, at a time of family crisis, another Wolf cloak came to me, similar to the one I was given previously, only in even better condition and with longer, redder fur. I found it in an antique shop in Rye, Sussex, less than five miles from the friend’s house where I’d encountered the first one. Like that first one, it also consisted of six pelts, trimmed down and sewn together. It was of a similar vintage too, the London-based company who made it into a rug having ceased trading in the 1940s. The first cloak having become a little worn and frayed from years of use, the second arrived at precisely the right time in my life, helping to renew my relationship with Wolf spirit. It has since become my primary ceremonial cloak.
My strong feeling is that the Wolves whose hides I wear brought them to me so that I could work with them, wear them and honour them. Too many ‘coincidences’ have piled up surrounding the two Wolf-skin cloaks for that not to be the case. Plus I have the evidence of my own senses. I have seen the Wolves themselves frolicking on my bed where I keep the hides. They have also joined my Wolf alter-ego in spirit journeying. Others, of course, may think me mad or deluded. I can only report what I have seen, heard and felt.
To work successfully with animal spirits, you have to a) believe in their existence, and b) honour them. I believe that animal spirits come to us to lend us spiritual power as well as to teach and guide us, and that failing to properly honour them can lead to a loss of purpose, health and sanity. This is not something we can afford to be casual about, take for granted, or play with for effect.
In the 22 years I’ve been wearing Wolf-skins in ceremony, I’ve been criticised for doing so only by people who didn’t know how the hides were acquired and didn’t bother to ask. It would be interesting to know how many of them would have voiced similar criticisms had I been a Siberian shaman or a First Nations medicine man instead of a British Druid. I wear them not as a fashion choice or a pose, or for warmth, but as a deep, inherent and vital part of my spiritual journey, in which I am honoured to be accompanied by fellow Wolves who choose to walk the path with me.
After Wolf, the spirit animal I’ve worked with most is Eagle, and I’m blessed to have been given three beautiful Eagle feathers, gifts from a shamanic practitioner, a Druid and a shamanic Druid. The feathers were all found in the wild by the individuals who gave them to me after having been shed by their winged owners. One came from Siberia, one from an island off the Norwegian coast, the other from Australia.
In my work, I sometimes use a Cormorant wing for fanning smoke, summoning spirits of Air, or linking me with the spirit of Morfran, son of Ceridwen. In the middle of winter, many years ago, I was walking my children through a park to their primary school when I saw a dead Cormorant floating in a hole in the ice on a lake. It being a Friday, I decided that if the Cormorant was still there on Monday, that would be a sign that I should take it and work with it. Not only had it not been removed from the lake by Monday, the hole in the ice had expanded and the Cormorant had floated to the shore so that I could reach it without even having to step onto the ice.
I took it home, removed a wing and the tail, and buried the rest in my back garden with prayers for the spirit of the animal. Returning alone to the lake, I allowed my spirit to slip back a few days in time and to inhabit the body of the Cormorant, then still living. I dived with it, seeking fish below the water on which to feed. On the third dive, a fish darted off beneath the surface ice and the Cormorant followed, couldn’t get back to open water in time, and drowned. I experienced this directly, having projected my spirit into the Cormorant. I made further prayers for the Cormorant and its family, members of which stayed at the lakeside for several weeks after the drowning. I still have both wing and tail and still use them in ceremony.
Other people I know in the Druid and shamanic communities use animals who have died a natural death or as roadkill wherever possible. In my case, few Wolves are killed on the roads, our ancestors having eradicated them from Britain centuries ago through ignorance and fear.
I make drums. To do so, I fell trees for the timber hoops and use Red Deer hides for the skins. I seek permission from the spirits of the trees. The deer hides are from Bradgate Park, Britain’s oldest continuously managed deer park, enclosed since the 13th century. As an enclosed park, space is limited, limiting the number of deer that can successfully graze it and remain healthy. Since all natural predators on deer, apart from humans, have been eradicated, the number of deer born in the park always outstrips the number who die from natural causes. Therefore, to maintain the health of the herd, some animals are killed every year. Their meat is sold, raising money for the upkeep of the park and the deer. Prior to my arrival, the hides were thrown away. Now, I get them, fur on, and make them into drums and rattles. During the process, I sense from the hides that the spirits of the deer are willing to work with me, and to work with the person the drum then goes to. If it were otherwise, I wouldn’t do it.
My belief is that the spirits of the deer continue to live in this world through the drums I make, especially when they are played in ceremony. As part of the process of bringing the drum into use, I recommend that their owners travel in spirit to meet the spirits of the tree that died to make the hoop and the deer that died to make the skin, to witness their whole life cycle, through to the moment of death, to ask them to inhabit the drum, empower it and continue to live through it. Tree and deer thus maintain their place as part of the wider community of spirits that includes us as humans and all of nature.
My criteria is, as I believe it was for our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors, the absolute conviction that the plants and animals themselves are willing to work with us through giving us their parts after death. Here, in our largely secular, post-industrial society, we encounter a problem. Most people, even in Druid and Pagan circles, do not communicate either with the dead or with animals or plants, and many do not believe those of us who say that we do. There’s nothing I can do about that. I can only speak for myself and from my own experience, and pass on what the animals and plants tell me. Those who work with me through feathers, wings, fur, skin, teeth and claws, do so willingly. If they didn’t, rather than gain power through forging a bond of kinship with them, they would ensure that I lost power and suffered, mentally, spiritually and physically. In working with spirit animals, unethical behaviour will ultimately receive its just reward. By the same token, ethical behaviour brings great rewards in, among other things, expanded understanding, altered perspectives, spiritual enrichment, enhanced health and greater ability to help others.
The understanding I have gained from working with Wolves, and more especially from the experience of being a Wolf, has greatly increased my concern for the welfare of my Wolf kin in the wild. It has also increased my belief that wild Wolves should be reintroduced into the UK, beginning in Scotland. Reindeer were successfully reintroduced there some years ago and have since thrived. In the absence of predators, their numbers have increased so rapidly that there is now an annual cull, with large numbers being shot. There is a similar over-abundance of Red Deer. The reintroduction of Wolves would eliminate the need for a cull while ensuring that it is mainly weak, ill and elderly animals who were killed, thus improving the overall health of the herds.
I conclusion, while I fully support many of the arguments in favour of vegetarianism and veganism, oppose the cruel methods used to farm animals for food, and appreciate the validity of the ecological and ethical cases against farming animals for food, I will continue to work with animal spirits and with animal parts in the ways that I do. Doing so is crucial to the spiritual path I have been guided into. I am a Wolf. Although Wolves do eat berries and roots, the main part of their diet is meat. The spirit Wolves who work with me like to be fed. Shamanic friends have told me repeatedly that I must feed my Wolves. I know they are right. In order to sustain my relationship with them, I must feed them, and the food they crave most is meat.
While some vegetarians and vegans are quick to condemn fellow humans for eating meat, few would condemn Wolves for doing the same. There is an implicit suggestion here that humans are morally and ethically superior to Wolves. As an animist, I find it difficult to support such a proposition. One look at any news broadcast will show just how immoral and unethical many humans can be compared to many animals. We make war against others of our own species, often for the most trivial of reasons. We subject billions of our species to abject poverty, starvation and disease while allowing a tiny minority to accumulate immense wealth. We blithely cause the extinction of numerous other species. We are also, of course, the only animal whose actions are capable of bringing an end to all life on our planet.
Having come to that space between the worlds where the Wolves and I eat meat, we are also at a place where we converse regularly with other animal spirits. If they are willing to work with us, we work with them. This is my way. It is not everyone’s way, and I’m not suggesting it should be or could be. Bobcat chose a different path and adopted a vegan diet, albeit as much for reasons of health as for ethical concerns. Nevertheless, she often wore a Bobcat tail on her belt and was not averse to working with other animal parts and, through them, with the spirits of the animals from which they came. We each have our path to follow. Along the way, we must each come to ethical decisions we can live with and live by. I respect and honour those who choose paths other than mine.
Blessings to all,
Greywolf /|\
(C) Greywolf and the BDO, 2016
Pacifism in Violent Times
“... the army demands huge budgets to stimulate research and guide it into specific channels, and youth is being indoctrinated with the spirit of nationalism. All this is done in preparation for the day when the spectre may come to life. Unfortunately, these very policies are the most effective way of actually bringing the spectre into being.”
Albert Einstein, 1953
Like Albert Einstein, I am a pacifist, and have been since I was four years old. Witnessing playground fights between individuals or rival gangs in primary school, I realised that the only results were that one or more people got hurt and existing resentments were further fuelled. Both results seemed entirely negative. It didn't take a genius to realise that the international playground fights we call wars are equally negative in their results, only people get not merely hurt but killed. At four years old, it was obvious that violence and anger simply perpetuate violence and anger, and that individuals or nations fighting each other inevitably results in losses that outweigh any possible gain. Except, of course, for those who manufacture and sell arms, who benefit hugely from promoting conflict. I have never since wavered in this belief.
Those who oppose pacifism often try to portray pacifists as cowards. This ignores just how difficult a choice pacifism is in a society where violence is so often admired, applauded and rewarded, from the fortunes paid to boxers to the medals awarded to soldiers.
From 1964 to 1970, I attended a Grammar school that had a boarding section where boys who had failed their 11-plus exam were sent by parents who could afford the fees. Failing the entrance exam, and being farmed out by their parents, led them to harbour huge resentments against us 'day boys.' As a strange child and a pacifist, I was singled out for special and sustained hostility. I was bullied every day of my school life, if not by fellow pupils then by teachers. That of my fellow pupils tended to be mainly verbal, although tripping up or pushing over were commonplace. In such circumstances, pacifism is far from being an easy option. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to respond in kind, and might well have saved me six years of mental torture and physical cruelty. I had, however, made a commitment to pacifism and refused to strike back, whatever the provocation. This simply reinforced my target status. Bullies famously being cowards meant that picking on someone who they knew would not strike back was seen as a gift. I became adept at fending off potential physical assaults with words. Since I was more intelligent than the bullies, this was relatively easy. As a result of my verbal skill, I never came to any serious physical harm.
Staff at the school harboured resentments of their own and were happy to take them out on any slightly unusual pupils through regular acts of random violence. Teachers meted out blows to the head with an open palm, blows elsewhere on the body with slippers, and occasionally more formal canings. Some preferred more refined tortures such as grabbing the nipple under the shirt and twisting it, or grabbing and twisting hair at the side of the head near the ear. Both were excruciatingly painful.
One teacher, having hit me for no reason the day before, apparently felt guilty about it and invited me to punch him in the stomach in return. I refused. He repeated the offer, assuring me that he wouldn't hit me back. Again, I refused, explaining to him that I was a pacifist. Eventually, he gave up trying to get me to punch him. It was clear that he found the idea of not responding to being hit by striking back both worrying and confusing.
Having left school, I adopted the lifestyle of an itinerant hippy, often sleeping rough. Like most homeless people, I was occasionally subjected to violence. Whilst napping in Hyde Park, I was woken up by three policemen kicking me. I had a knife held to my throat in an alleyway in Hastings Old Town. I was shot at from a passing car in the south of France. On none of these occasions was I afraid. I never froze, trembled or crumbled, but nor did I react with violence. While the policemen were kicking me, I engaged them in conversation. They stopped. With a knife at my throat, I talked my would-be assailant out of using it. He left town the following day. The gunman in France being in a passing car, the opportunity to talk never arose.
I've looked at how pacifists have responded to various wars, and how they have been treated as a result. This interest stemmed from my father (right) telling me that he had repeatedly been handed white feathers as emblems of his perceived cowardice during the second world war. The reason was that he was a man of fighting age who was not wearing a military uniform. He was, in fact, in a protected occupation, supervising quality control in a factory making parts for fighter planes. He was also an air raid warden, a job that sometimes involved aiding other services in rescuing people from bombed and burning buildings. Despite which, he was branded a coward by people who knew nothing whatsoever of his circumstances.
My father was not a pacifist, but he did mention others who had been treated similarly, including being spat upon in the street, because they refused to fight, not out of cowardice, but because of firm convictions that war is not a rational or sensible way to conduct human affairs. He told me that such people were often imprisoned. I later learned that draft boards in many conflicts, from WWI to Vietnam and beyond, regularly refused to accept pacifism as a valid reason not to conscript people into the armed forces. Pacifists so conscripted were then required to fight and shot by their fellow soldiers if they refused, either with or without a court-martial. In spite of which, many pacifists did refuse to fight, preferring to face a firing squad than to kill fellow humans. It seems to me that such a decision under these circumstances is extraordinarily courageous.
Nevertheless, I seem to be in a minority. Most people seem to find war a perfectly acceptable, albeit regrettable, way of settling differences between people. Even many soldiers who have fought in wars, experienced their horror, and suffered appalling long-term physical and psychological effects as a result, still believe that warfare is, if not a good thing, then at least justifiable in a wide range of circumstances. I simply refuse to believe that. However hard I try, I can't bring myself to accept that, in the second decade of the 21st century, we are unable to devise a better way to handle national, international, doctrinal or political disputes than dropping bombs on people, shooting them or gassing them. Is this really the best our species can manage? Really?
Can we learn from past mistakes?
As a keen amateur historian, it bewilders me that we never seem to learn from history. WWII would never have happened had it not been for WWI and its aftermath. Had the CIA not provided training and weapons for insurgents in Afghanistan, using them as a proxy army to oppose the Russian occupation of that country, there would have been no Taliban, and probably no Al-Qaida. Violent Islamic extremism would certainly not have emerged as the threat it is today had it not been for the 1990-91 Gulf War and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence breeds violence. Hatred breeds hatred. Intolerance breeds intolerance. Wars breed wars. These things have been witnessed again and again with the inevitability of night following day, winter following summer.
It's not as if there are no options other than war. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Hans Blix (left) and teams of UN inspectors were still working there, looking for the “weapons of mass destruction” that were touted by US President, George W. Bush, and UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as the reasons why we had to invade. The inspectors on the ground had already gathered enough evidence to strongly doubt that any such weapons existed. Given a few more weeks, they would have proven that beyond doubt. Instead, they were told to stop work and go home, and the invasion went ahead, with the predictably disastrous results that continue to plague us. Not least of which is the rise of violent Islamic extremism.
When faced with an external threat, the question inevitably arises, if not war, then what? The short answer is, of course, peace. Even Winston Churchill, a former soldier himself, and having just led Britain through perhaps the modern world's most justifiable war, still had the sense to say that it is always “better to jaw jaw than war war.” My friend and fellow pacifist, Paul Davies, sent me the link below. It outlines eight non-violent alternative ways to resolve conflicts, all of which have been used successfully in recent years, either alone or in conjunction. Please take a look. It makes inspiring reading.
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/8-ways-defend-terror-nonviolently/
To encourage you to go and look, here are the 'headlines' of the eight methods suggested:
1. Ally-building and the infrastructure of economic development
2. Reducing cultural marginalization
3. Nonviolent protest/campaigns among the defenders, plus unarmed civilian peacekeeping
4. Pro-conflict education and training (yes, that really is what it says)
5. Post-terror recovery programs
6. Police as peace officers: the infrastructure of norms and laws
7. Policy changes and the concept of reckless behaviour
8. Negotiation
The article refers to specific conflicts in which these techniques have been successfully used. If others can do it, why can't we? I believe that the answer is that we can, we just have to want to.
Peace-bashing and the UK Press
In general, the press in the UK do not like leaders of domestic political parties who try to promote peace. Some of us remember the hatchet job they did on Michael Foot, possibly the most intelligent man to lead a major British political party in the last century. The press fell upon him like a pack of rabid dogs when he wore what was said to be a 'donkey jacket' to a Remembrance Day ceremony in 1981. In fact, it wasn't a donkey jacket at all. It was an overcoat from Harrods. The Queen Mother complimented him on it. The UK press, however, have seldom been known to let facts prevent them from inventing a scandal, particularly if it will help kill the career of a sane, caring, decent left-wing politician.
Now we have not only much of the press, but also many of his Labour Party colleagues, similarly attempting to destroy Jeremy Corbyn's political career. After another Remembrance Day ceremony, Corbyn was roundly abused in the press for not bowing at the Cenotaph. In fact, he did. What's more, after all the other politicians had gone off to a lavish lunch, he stayed on, chatting with veterans and taking photographs with and for them. The veterans appreciated this even if the press didn't. Most of the press preferred not to mention it at all, focusing instead on what they hoped would be a politically damaging lie.
As with Michael Foot, there have also been disparaging remarks about Corbyn's choice of clothing. As if it matters. As with Foot, people record every word Corbyn says and then freely misrepresent it in order to show him in the worst possible light. Why? Well, many Labour Party MPs enjoyed the privileges and benefits of power during the Blair years and sincerely believe that it is only by aping Thatcherite Conservative policies, as Blair did, that the Labour Party makes itself electable. They ignore the fact that Blair's decision to go along with the Bush-led invasion of Iraq made Britain a prime target for terrorist attacks. Blair's Thatcherite policies alienated so many traditional Labour voters that the party was virtually wiped off the political map of Scotland at the last election. The Blairites also choose to ignore the fact that Corbyn's election as party leader has led to a massive upsurge in party membership. His ideas particularly resonate with young people, many of whom have previously not engaged with politics, put off by the sneering self-interest of MPs of all major parties, drawn as they tend to be from a tiny, public school and Oxbridge educated elite.
Another factor behind the vitriol directed against both Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn is their active membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and their determination to promote alternatives to war as the primary means of settling international disputes. Accusations of pacifism have been levelled at both men as though it were a crime. Echoes of the white feathers and spitting in the street directed at conscientious objectors during both world wars.
Following one recent angry meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, an unnamed member of Corbyn's own shadow cabinet described him as “a fucking disgrace.” This childish abuse was prompted by a TV interview Corbyn gave to the BBC. A 30-second exchange was cherry-picked from this nearly 8-minute piece and repeatedly used to make it sound as though Corbyn would not allow the police to defend people who were being murdered by terrorists. What he actually said was that he was “not in favour of a general shoot-to-kill policy being adopted on the streets of the UK.” Given the number of innocent people who have been shot dead by armed police over the years, this seems a fair and reasonable statement to make. As Corbyn also says in the interview, it does not mean that, in a situation where lives are immediately threatened, as they were in Paris recently, all means should not be taken to prevent further loss of life.
In the interview, Corbyn makes the point that the best way to deal with terrorism in the long term is to create the kind of world in which people do not feel driven to resort to it. He also suggests that the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 made the situation in the Middle East worse, creating the circumstances in which Islamic fundamentalism could flourish and promote terrorism. The same point has been made in recent days by US President, Barack Obama, and by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, neither of whom have been pilloried for it in the UK press in the way that Corbyn is continually. Of course, it's much easier to condemn someone based on a single sentence taken out of context than it is to engage with the totality of their views. Unfortunately, more people hear the selected soundbite and the misleading spin put on it than will ever hear the original interview.
Here's the full Jeremy Corbyn interview so you can make up your own mind about what he said:
Again, as with Michael Foot in the early 80s, Corbyn is pilloried by some of his own MPs for opposing the renewal of Britain's Trident nuclear missiles. The Labour Party manifesto for the 1983 general election included a call for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Right-wing Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, famously described it as “the longest suicide note in history.” The manifesto also called for greater public control over the banking sector, and for the nationalisation of banks who didn't agree to tighter controls over their behaviour. In light of the ongoing global financial crisis brought about by the banks, this may now be viewed as more rational than radical.
What was actually in the '83 Labour manifesto? A few highlights are mentioned in this short piece on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm
The cost of renewing the Trident system, which everyone agrees would never be used, has been put at a massive £97 billion. At a time when the UK government is planning cuts to social security, social services, support for the low paid, health care, home care for the elderly, local councils, social housing and education, I am staggered that anyone supports spending this amount of money on any weapons system, let alone one the use of which would signal the end of the world. No wonder the policy of mutually assured destruction has the acronym, MAD. Redirecting that money would mean that, far from cutting support for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, we could improve provision for them.
Who benefits from war?
In hindsight, the Conservative victory in '83 had less to do with Labour policies or Michael Foot's overcoat and much more to do with the jingoistic turn-around in Tory fortunes following the perceived victory in the 1982 Falklands war. Prior to the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular Prime Minister the UK had ever had. Following it, she became the 'Iron Lady' and went from being a political liability for her party to an asset. Voters seem to love a good war, as long as it can be portrayed as successful.
It's surely no coincidence that it was later in 1983 that Ronald Reagan sent American troops to invade the small Caribbean island of Grenada. The US troops met little resistance and the 'war' was over in two days. 78 people died, 18 of whom were patients and staff in a mental hospital that the US forces bombed by accident. The US government awarded more than 5,000 medals for valour. What had worked for Thatcher worked for Reagan too. His domestic popularity soared.
These two short military interventions unfortunately led to a widespread belief amongst politicians that wars equal votes. It is debatable whether the US-led wars in the Middle East would have happened had it not been for the political gains resulting from the Falklands and Grenada conflicts. That and the prospect of cheaper oil, of course. And the vast war profits accruing to Haliburton, a company in which Bush and his chief advisers, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, all had substantial holdings.
Does war make us safer?
Jeremy Corbyn is also slated for being one of the few politicians to publicly admit that the mess in the Middle East, and the resulting terrorism, are at least partly the fault of US, UK and European policies in the region. These consist not just of the Gulf war and the Iraq war, but repeated more-or-less covert attempts to destabilise or overthrow regimes of which we did not approve, often, as with the US in Afghanistan, by arming, funding and training terrorist groups as proxies. This is a policy the West has pursued at least since WWI. While doing so, the West has imposed and then propped up some truly awful regimes, usually repressive dictatorships, as long as the dictators in question were willing to keep the oil flowing. Is it any wonder that many people in the region view the West with deep suspicion, contempt, even hatred? Is it acceptable to pillory people like Jeremy Corbyn for pointing out the consequences of our past mistakes and displaying a willingness not to repeat them and even, perhaps, to make amends for them and learn from them so as not to make those same mistakes again?
I was four when I realised that violence has vastly more negative results than positive. I'm still waiting and hoping for the rest of the world to grow up.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the question what would I do if I were attending a rock concert and four heavily armed suicide bombers started shooting everyone in sight? In lesser situations, I have placed myself between people threatening violence and those they were threatening. Would I do the same if the threat were from guns rather than fists? The honest answer is, I don't know. What I do know, and I wholeheartedly agree with Jeremy Corbyn on this, is that I would do all I could to prevent further killing. I also agree with him that we shouldn't have got ourselves into a place where events like those in Paris can happen, and that, now we're faced with it, there has to be a better way out of it than simply piling killing on top of killing. That way nothing but madness and destruction lie. Since increased antipathy and hostility are precisely what the clerics behind the self-proclaimed Islamic State want, should we really be delivering them to them? Are we not simply providing further justification for their rhetoric of hatred and violence?
I'm aware that I may come across as an apologist for Jeremy Corbyn in this piece and I accept that that will annoy and upset some people. I should point out that I am not a member of any political party and never have been. Mostly, I follow the anarchist precept, “don't vote – it only encourages them.” Like many thinking people of all ages, I have been turned off the political process by the abysmal behaviour of so many politicians. Since the 1970s, I have watched in disgust as more and more of the plentiful resources of my country have been taken away from the poor and given to the rich. At the same time, I have witnessed innumerable scandals about politicians lining their own pockets at public expense. It appals me to witness social care being cut while MPs use public money to have their moats cleaned, buy expensive second homes, or pay members of their family large salaries for doing nothing. I would rather not think of the people who run my country as a bunch of money-grubbing crooks, but when that's how they behave, it's hard not to.
And then there's Tony Blair, who had the opportunity to stop the invasion of Iraq before it began, but who had a nice chat with God, who told him it'd be fine and he should go ahead. Over two million people turning out on the streets of UK cities on a single day to march for peace did nothing to persuade him otherwise. Nor did the evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction. He decided it was better to lie to us all and go ahead anyway. Of course people are turned off politics in droves. Blair's catastrophic actions over the invasion of Iraq were, of course, what lay behind MPs refusal to back military intervention in Syria when it was last put to parliament. For a short time, it looked as though we might actually be learning from past mistakes. Now that majority against bombing Syria seems to be weakening.
That's why I think it's right to speak up for the occasional person within politics who seems to have genuine convictions, a genuine desire to do good, and a real desire to help all the people of this country, not just the wealthiest few. As a pacifist myself, the outraged responses to Corbyn's pacifist ideals depresses, but does not surprise me.
The question we all must ask ourselves is, have recent wars made the world a safer, better place? Surely the only rational answer can be that they have made the world a worse, less stable and more violent place, have fuelled hatred and increased terrorism. In which case, we need alternatives and we need them now. The alternative to war is peace, and isn't that what the sane among us all want, whether we're Christian, Muslim, Pagan, Jewish, Hindu, Shinto, Atheist or Jain?
As we say at the beginning of most public Druid ceremonies,
"May there be peace throughout all the world."
Blessings, and peace,
Greywolf /|\
The Earth, The Gods and The Soul: A History of Pagan Philosophy from the Iron Age to the 21st Century
by Brendan Myers
2013, Moon Books, Winchester (UK) and Washington (US)
313 pages
£11.99 UK, $20.95 US
Listening to religious broadcasts on BBC radio for many years, I'm frequently struck by the easy assumption of so many speakers that only monotheistic faiths have ever made any valuable contribution to culture. This despite the fact that pagans invented philosophy, democracy, scientific enquiry, medicine, representational art and much else besides. I've often thought that someone should write a book detailing the history of pagan contributions to the world in general, and the Western world in particular. Brendan Myers has written just such a book on the theme of philosophy, and a very welcome, highly readable book it is too, full of illuminating insights.
I know some folk are put off by the very mention of philosophy, thinking that a book on the subject must be dry, dusty and full of abstruse terminology and highly abstract notions that have nothing whatever to do with life as it is lived. In these areas, Myers scores very highly by not burdening his text with technical jargon, explaining with precision and clarity the terms he does use and, with warm humanity, revealing the many ways in which philosophy not only effects us, but in many ways defines us, individually and collectively.
At the heart of the whole project of philosophy is the search for answers to questions concerning reality, divinity, humanity and our role in the universe, what happens to us when we die, and how should we best live our lives? With this in mind, Myers (left) introduces us to a range of philosophers, from the classical, Graeco-Roman era through to the present century, setting out with admirable brevity the ideas that are central to their philosophies. Those of us with an interest in the subject, but neither the time nor patience to wade through thousands of pages of texts in search of hidden nuggets must be hugely grateful that a writer with such a keen mind has done the wading for us, located the nuggets and set them out before us so clearly.
The philosophers we meet along the way represent a wide spectrum and some may seem like surprising inclusions. Some historians may question the inclusion of medieval texts produced in Iceland and Ireland, arguing that they were written well into the Christian era and cannot, therefore, accurately reflect pagan beliefs. Their influence on modern Pagans is, however, unquestionable, and one could convincingly argue that they deserve to be included on that score alone. That said, I am convinced that Myers has teased out from among them a set of values that is authentically pagan.
We're on less contentious ground with our next batch of philosophers, beginning with the Pre-Socratics and taking in such famous names as Pythagoras (left), Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Plotinus, as well as a number of lesser known luminaries. Once again, Myers succeeds in making their contributions to human understanding readily comprehensible to any moderately intelligent reader. He places them in their historical context, outlines the various schools of philosophy they founded or influenced, and explains how they fit into the evolving scheme of human understanding of our place in the universe. This section closes with a consideration of how pagan ideas returned to the mainstream of European thought during the Renaissance, revitalising not only philosophy, but art, literature and politics.
The third section introduces us to a rebellious group of free-thinkers whose work enlivened the so-called Age of Reason, from the mid-17th century through to the 19th. These include two names familiar to anyone who knows the history of Druidry; the Irishman, John Toland (1670-1722), and the Welshman, Edward Williams (right), a.k.a. Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826). Again, it's good to have such a clear, concise exposition of what these colourful characters actually believed. Others in this section include Spinoza, Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Schopenhauer and Neitzsche. As Myers admits, none of these gentlemen would have called themselves pagans, yet it's clear from what they wrote that they were part of a tradition of thought that can justifiably be described as pagan. Usually, it is a spiritual, inspirational, sometimes visionary relationship with Nature that marks them out for inclusion in this book.
The next section leads us through the lives and thoughts of another disparate group of colourful eccentrics and outsiders whose thinking has had a profound influence on the modern resurgence of Paganism. These include the founder of Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky; Sir James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough; the poet, Robert Graves (left, with one of his muses), whose book, The White Goddess, became, despite its author's protestations, a foundational text of both modern Wicca and Druidry; Aleister Crowley, George Russell (AE), whose Candle of Vision, I learn from Myers, was written as the core manual for a Celtic magical order, the Castle of Heroes, proposed by AE's friend, W. B. Yeats; Stewart Farrar, who annotated and published the first full version of the Wiccan Book of Shadows; and Isaac Bonewits, founder of the influential American Druid group, ADF. Along the way, we are guided through the birth of American feminist Wicca, the rise of eco-spirituality and the development of the Gaia hypothesis and the Deep Ecology movement. Given the deep impact that both feminism and ecology have had, and continue to have, on our world, it is fascinating to know where, when and how they developed and to learn more about the individuals involved.
We move then to living Pagan thinkers, several of whom would not describe themselves as philosophers, but whose writings have been profoundly influential on the development of Paganism in the present century. These include such well-known figures as Starhawk (Miriam Simos), Emma Restall Orr (Bobcat), John Michael Greer, Michael York, Vivianne Crowley (right), Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone. I realise that I'm less familiar with the works of Greer and York than I should be and intend to remedy that as soon as possible. It's one of the joys of books like this one that they inspire us to explore further.
I'm honestly awestruck at the sheer range of ideas included in a book just a little over 300 pages long. That they are all explained with such clarity is a huge bonus. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in the enormous contributions pagans have made to human understanding, in what leading modern Pagans think and believe, and in where pagan philosophical thought might go from here. In creating this book, Brendan Myers has done a huge service to the Pagan community. Exceptional and highly recommended.
Many blessings,
Greywolf /|\