Maris Pái

the beauty lies within in god’s own country.
it sleeps beneath the soil and ‘neath the sand.
it’s our mothers and fathers, our heroes and martyrs,
for god’s in the people and people are the land.

['God's Own Country' from The Beautiful Game.]

There are countries in the world that people envision always in the present moment; countries of progress, fashion and modernity. Some of these eternal-present countries are steeped in their past and the hallmarks of ancient struggle and past triumphs shape that present — America, in particular, is like that with its national myth being a progress narrative that tips its forelock constantly to the Founding Fathers. On the flipside, there are countries that seem to be so deeply entrenched in a sense of their mythic past and historical struggles that everyday life is always, always coloured by it. I’ve been living in Ireland for the last two and a half years, and I don’t feel like I’m being too daring to say that Ireland is most definitely one of these countries.

The physical landscape is peppered with ruins of castles, abbeys and abandoned cottages and there’s a mound or dolmen of some significance usually within a half-hour drive of wherever you might be. Holy wells and sacred rivers tumble over rocks that were once part of a long-ago boundary, and you never have to look hard for an agricultural field that mows or grazes animals around a fairy bush that the farmer would never dare disturb. Superstition and myth are carved into rock and soil, and that (along with the legacy of eight hundred years of oppression by the English) echoes in the national character.

This is a land of emigration — the songs and stories will tell you that as surely as the massive quantity of North Americans who all claim Irish descent — but also a land that bares the scars of invasion like a chip on the shoulder. It’s strange to be a foreigner in Ireland. (Stranger still to have an Irish passport and to have been told you’re Irish your whole life and still be a foreigner in Ireland.) The land itself — to say nothing of the people — is wary of newcomers, and even coming from the next county over can mark you as ‘not from around here’, and that matters more than I had realised. As I pointed out in my ‘E is for England‘ post, I’ve never had a really true sense of what Irishness means, but there’s a lot of people over here who are willing to tell you what it’s not.

“Genuine Irish family ancestry does not make you Irish. [...] If your great-great-great-granny came across the waters on a famine ship… and you are the end result of that emigration, it certainly does not make you ‘more Irish’ than somebody who may not have ‘Irish blood’ in the veins but has lived in or often visited this land, has taken time to observe the culture, learn the language… and gotten to know the people and their peculiarities aplenty. [...] Proclaiming the words ‘I am Irish,’ to me, means you are currently living in Ireland or have at least spent a good part of your life… actually living in this land.”

(Lora O’Brien, Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch, p 27-28)

The sentiment is an increasingly common one. The internet lately seems as riddled with people denying anyone ownership of anything as the Irish landscape is with sacred sites. I’ve seen people’s personal connections, religious practices and religio-cultural identities criticized on grounds of blood/ancestry (as above: just because you’re descended from X doesn’t mean you are X); on grounds of location (living here doesn’t mean you can worship the gods from here); or on grounds of personal affinity (what connection do you have to any of this, you dilletante?). And on the flip-side, I’ve seen arguments that each of those grounds — ancestry, location, personal affinity — are the only ones that matter (worship the gods of your ancestors; you need to be here to do this work; follow your heart and instincts). It’s a terribly thorny path to navigate and one that everyone seems desperate to claim the high ground on.

This all connects back to my last post on whether I’m a heathen or not, in sentiment if nothing else. I am of Irish descent (on both sides, actually; my father was the first of his family to leave this island and my mother’s parents were both the firsts in their families) and I am living here in Ireland. But the gods who call to me are largely not gods from around these parts. (N.B. I say gods specifically, because local wights are an entirely different thing and my relationship with them is just fine, thank you.) The gods who I work with and for are gods of a race of invaders to this island: the Vikings. Aside from the inevitable inbreeding when a race of conquerors settles somewhere, I can’t trace any Scandinavian heritage in my bloodlines; I’ve yet to visit any of their homelands; and my knowledge of their languages extends only as far as some translations that I’ve been doing of rune poems with Talas’ assistance. According to some schools of thought, I shouldn’t be permitted to worship Freyr and Freyja. But according to others, I’m not Irish enough to honor Brigid, Lugh or Dagda, either. If I was asking permission, I’d be kind of put out.

I’ve been an immigrant for basically my whole life, even to the country I was born in (again, see ‘E is for England‘ for more on that) and that does offer a different perspective on the whole residency/nationality debate. It changes your sense of place (as a concept) and of places (as discrete locations), because if you’ve only ever been one somewhere, that somewhere is your whole world. You live your life the only way you know life to be lived, because everyone around you lives like that. When I was younger, I remember my grandparents saying that “there’s none so Irish as the Irish abroad”, and whether it is literally true, there’s an emotional resonance to the sentiment because the Irish diaspora are tied by their heartstrings to a sense of home, and the traditions they honour are cultivated and chosen rather than habitual. It’s the flipside to a country with so long a history of emigration: the immigrants go somewhere, and they bring pieces of Ireland with them. Those pieces might be fragmentary or distorted, but they connect back to some kernal of truth, some greater, more mythic sense of Ireland than mundane reality.

Personally, I connect more to my sense of the Irish diaspora than to an ‘actual’ Irish identity, especially having lived here now. Ultimately, I can’t say where I’ll be in ten years’ time, if we will still be here or not, but the time I’ve spent here has broadened my understanding of heritage and home and ancestry — all fraught issues in modern heathenry. One’s ancestral land is not always home, no matter how many songs and stories and traditionalists tell you so, and even if you do find a sense of belonging, it doesn’t mean that you won’t all the while be longing for somewhere else.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
- William Butler Yeats

Confession: I have a problematic relationship with the word ‘heathen’.

Given that I am the assistant editor of HUGINN Journal which we describe as a ‘journal of alternate heathenry’, this is sort-of extra problematic.

As a word, in its purest form (probably derived from the Old English hǽðen “not Christian or Jewish” [c.f. Old Norse heiðinn]; probably influenced by Gothic haiþi “dwelling on the heath”), I have no issues. I am not Christian any longer and I was never Jewish. I live out in the bog, which is not a heath, really, but it’s closer than I’ve lived to one before now, and that ties, too, to the Latin paganus (‘country dweller’) which was originally as much of a perjorative term as heathen. These days, though, the word is used more specifically as a name for an adherent to Germanic neopaganism and that’s where it all gets so terribly problematic.

Germanic neopaganism is a global movement aiming to revive the indigenous religion (or at least the worship of the gods of) the Germanic and Nordic peoples. The attitudes, beliefs, focus and ideals of those involved in this movement are dizzyingly diverse, ranging from strict Reconstructionism to innovative mysticism, criss-crossing through syncretism and even atheism on its way. There are so very many different ways to be heathen, just as there are a multiplicity of ways of being a Christian — and just like within Christianity there are schisms and in-fighting, there’s a lot of ugly politics within heathenry as to who has a right to the word. It’s absolutely tedious and more than a little heartbreaking. Just as the American left- and right-wing political groups will never see eye to eye, neither will the traditional and alternative branches of heathenry. Where perjoratives like “lore-thumpers” and “jotun-lovers” get thrown around as readily as accusations of racism, white supremacy and sexual perversion, there is no room to build frith* between the opposing sides.

I come to heathenry through my husband, the Odinsman who calls Loki kinsman, and through the gods that I serve (mostly Vanir these days), but I wear the ‘heathen’ mantle uneasily. The accusations leveled (largely at “etin-worshippers”) of ‘doing it wrong’ resonate with me because I am at heart a green witch with a very experiential, earth-based practice. Heathenry isn’t an earth religion, not as it’s written. Not really. ‘Vanatrúar’ works a bit better for me, in part because that definition hasn’t been whittled away as much by so many assholes with so many agendas.

When HUGINN Journal came out, there was a flurry of furiously dissenting voices on various lists and boards. There was support too, and we’ve been delighted to hear from people who see the journal as providing a truly necessary forum, but I’m a sensitive soul and there was a particular comment from the right-wing contingent of heathenry that stuck with me — “these particular folks…. they’re vile, despicable people and they point at what they do and they try to pass it off as heathenry.” [source] I’d never been tarred quite so haphazardly before, but it kept coming. We’ve seen the whole journal written off as a subsidiary of Cauldron Farm (I’ve never even been to Massachusetts) and Talas and I dismissed as puppets of R. Kaldera esq. and the Rev. Krasskova (I’ve never met either of them in person, but we’ve exchanged emails and I find them both to be charming, actually). It’s quite irksome, actually; if you’re going to condemn me, at least make it for something I am doing, please.

In our house, we honour Odin and Frigga as King and Queen of the Aesir, yes, but we always (in deference to lore, no less) raise a horn for Loki whenever we drink to the All-Father. Freyr and Freya are the twin stars that my world orbits, but Loki and Sigyn have taught me endurance for the sake of love when mundane law and politics have tried to trespass upon the sacred ground of my marriage. My garden is dedicated to Freyr’s Jotun bride Gerda, Whose family took His sword as a bride-price thus further tipping the scales for Ragnarok (an event entirely too obsessed about, imho).

Diana Paxson and the aforementioned Raven Kaldera sit side-by-side on our bookshelf (which also includes Aleister Crowley, the Farrars, Jan Fries, Ronald Hutton, Philip Carr-Gomm, David Abram and others). I’ve raised a horn with Wiccans, reenactors and agnostics, and my prefered divination system is the tarot, not the runes. I’ve trance-danced around a bonfire on Midsummer and poured out cider at Yule atop an Irish mound said to be the seat of Queen Medb, and I’ve seen my husband engage in ritual combat as the Oak King to keep the seasons turning. I dedicate household chores to Frigga and bake bread for Freyr, and my honey-based homemade facial scrub is always blessed on Freya’s altar.

With my penchant for herbs, oils, hedgerows, trees and wild places, ‘hedgewitch’ is likely a better fit for me than the other h-word, really. I wear an amber teardrop, a key or a boar (or my in-progress Brisingamen) for my religious symbols, not a Mjölnir, and a mug of well-brewed tea can be as sacred to me as a horn of mead. So, am I a heathen? I really don’t know. But I’m the only one who gets to make that call for me. I’ll let you know what I decide when I decide it.

You’ve got opinions, man
We’re all entitled to ‘em
But I never asked

So let me thank you for time
And try to not waste any more of mine
Get out of here fast

[...]

Who cares if you disagree
You are not me
Who made you king of anything
So you dare tell me who to be
Who died
And made you king of anything

– ‘King of Anything‘, Sara Bareilles

* ‘Frith’ is a core heathen virtue with a complex definition that can be best explained as a state of stability that is built upon a secure web of interpersonal relationships all working towards a mutually beneficial and sustainable peace.

A short list of things that I’m grateful for right now — because gratitude is powerful & beautiful and an essential part of my practice.

Firstly, as always, my husband. Tuesday-coming is our sixth wedding anniversary and I am astonished, delighted and humbled to see how far we’ve come, my love.

Beyond the first, there is no real order to any of this, no hierarchy or system, save that of my own memory, in the organisation of the list.

The simple blessings in my life. Good food, shelter, a home, a garden, my cats. A mug of Twinings’ English Breakfast tea. Fuzzy socks for cold feet. A bite or two of chocolate to sweeten my mood. Toasted sandwiches. Hot water bottles. Cocoa butter body lotion.

I have my health. Once, not that long ago, I didn’t. Every day without pain is a gift — a gift that some of those near and dear to me do not have.

Friendships, past, present and yet to be. We had visitors not so long ago from the US, good friends who have known Talas longer than I have and who have become our friends and not just his; talking with them has changed our future path for the better, and that is absolutely something to be grateful for. Each of you in the greater heathen/pagan community that I chat with on a regular to semi-regular basis, too, I count as blessings.

My study — a small space in our home just for me. Virginia Woolf wrote that what a woman needed most profoundly was a room of her own and my strange, cluttered little space is wonderfully that. My desk and my altar are both here and plants, too, and it’s wonderful.

Summer is coming. The astonishing April showers will, in fact, give way to the flowers and sunshine of summer eventually, and we had such a mild winter this year. A blessing indeed after so many years in the frozen north.

Books, quotations, essays, thoughts and ideas. I’m reading The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate right now and it’s wonderful. I’m intoxicated by fairytales at the moment, too, and enjoying new twists on them.

Projects. I have so many in-progress projects right now that I could scream some days but truly, isn’t that better than being bored? (It is, occasionally, crippling me with indecision as regards what to work on, but that’s not worth getting into in a gratitude post.)

My Gods, spirits, deads and allies: as always, you are a blessing.

What are you grateful for today?

(… and I’m also deeply grateful for finishing this ‘g’ post after attempting three different subjects for it!)

The word ‘empathy’ is derived from the Greek ἐμπάθεια (empatheia), meaning “physical affection, passion, partiality” which comes from ἐν (en), “in, at” + πάθος (pathos), “passion” or “suffering”. On paper, empathy is simply defined as the ability to ‘read’ or understand emotional states that are not your own, often to the point of (voluntarily or involuntarily) tuning in to these emotions. Empathy can occur between people, or with animals, places and even inanimate objects — anything that can hold an emotional state or even just a basic energy pattern. Empaths may not even know quite what their gift is, but they have almost certainly gne through life believing themselves to be, and being told that they are, extraordinarily sensitive.

One of the most obvious places for empathic connection is between loved ones and in familial bonds. Some of my most vivid emotional impressions and possibly my deepest experiences of empathy are with Talas, and you will often hear stories of parents feeling deep connections to their children and knowing when they’re in danger. Or perhaps you have (or are) that friend who is the go-to person for tea and sympathy — the person who always manages to buoy someone up in their trouble and may, unfortunately, take on that suffering instead.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. To sympathize is to care for someone else’s troubles and to feel for them in their situation — “I feel bad for you” is sympathy. Sympathy is in the heart and the mind; it is compassion and warmth. Empathy is to know what the other person is feeling without them having to articulate it, to know it in your body because all deep feelings are physical. Empathy shares another’s experience without judgment or bias; sympathy is an awareness of that experience.

To be empathic and not aware that’s what it is can be like living your life as a psychic open wound. I took antidepressants once that absolutely killed my empathy and any ability I had to sense energy; it was silent in my head for the first time ever, and I was horrified. I’ve never been headblind before and I hated it. It did, however, solidify my theory that a percentage of people with chronic depression are psychic (or at least sensitive) in some way, and the medications help shut down the additional sensory input. Even when you do know you’re empathic, you can very much be at the mercy of the emotions of those you’re closest to, especially if they have a dominant personality — but not knowing you’re empathic can put you in a situation of feeling so much all the time, and so very deeply, without understanding why. It can be a truly horrible, scary thing, being at the mercy of the emotional currents around you all the time…

Which is why it is so absolutely essential to learn to centre, ground and shield. I’d tell anyone with the vaguest interest in paganism, the occult or the spirit world that those are necessary skills and among the first thing anyone should learn, but if you even suspect that you’re an empath make learning these skills a priority. Do not pass go, do not collect $200: learn to centre, ground and shield, and learn it well enough that you can stand in the middle of a metropolitan city in rush hour and centre, ground and shield. For your sanity’s sake, trust me on this one.

Centre first, bringing all your scattered energy and your diffused self back into alignment. (I close my eyes and envision the scattered parts as floating around me like stars or confetti in the air… and then I connect up through my chakras and ‘magnetise’ my central energy column to pull everything back into alignment. You might have another way, but that one works for me.)

Then ground, connecting to the earth and letting all the negative energy go so you can cycle the positive stuff through your body with every breath. (Again, I close my eyes and I really feel my feet reaching down to the earth — after enough practice, I can even do this in heels on concrete, but it’s easier not to — and let my left foot become an ‘out’ valve and my right an ‘in’ [with a filter, naturally] and I cycle my energy accordingly, letting all jangly, discordant and negative energy go and draw up fresh new energy to reconnect everything and keep me centred.)

And then I shield. I don’t recommend the ‘white light’ form of shielding because it’s too… I don’t know, it just doesn’t work for me, and it can be dazzling to my senses to the point where I’m verging on headblind again and that never works for me. Shielding is a way of protecting yourself from too much energetic input as much as it is about protecting yourself from attack or negativity. I’ll possibly write a seperate post on shielding at some point in the future because there are many different ways to do it and, frankly, there are already so many different techniques out there being written about by people better versed in the teaching of this stuff than I am. Pick one, and learn it thoroughly. Do it every day. Check it regularly — Sophie Reicher, who has written the best book on psychic self-defense and spiritual protection that I’ve ever read (and have internalised much of!) suggests that you pick a visual cue to remind you to check on your centering, grounding and shielding. Red cars, if you’re out and about, or any time you stop your day to have a drink or something. In fact, check it all then — your centering, grounding and shielding. Trust me on the sunscreen.

Another very important thing for an empath is to develop a strong sense of self. Because if you know who you are and stay connected to what’s going on in your heart and mind, you’re less likely to get all tangled up in someone else’s emotional fog. Never underestimate how much trouble that can be. Know yourself. Know your contradictions, your emotional triggers and your stress responses. Know what helps lift your mood out of an ‘irrational’ mood swing — because, especially when it’s not your fault, it helps to be able to counter these emotions. Connect with your inner self and hold that self sacred. Just because you can feel other people’s emotions doesn’t mean you should be continually swept along on the eddies of them — no matter how tempting it can be when your own life is a mess.

Set healthy boundaries — for yourself and others. It can be absolutely addictive, riding on the energy of a crowd, picking up a buzz from your surroundings, but as an empath you require quiet time to clear out the silent places inside you that get filled up with other people. Another fairly common trap for empaths to get caught up in is a cycle of people-pleasing. Everyone wants to be liked and it can be so validating and reassuring to be able to literally bask in someone’s approval and gratitude… to the point that you let yourself be taken for granted and used up for someone else’s selfish ends. To be fair, they might not even be conscious of how much it erodes you, but the more you do it, the more they’ll expect and the less you’ll get your emotional validation. These are ugly cycles, and there are so many other pitfalls to bear in mind. Be good to yourself and guard your sacrosanct inner places, lest you give yourself away like the rain.

Being an empath is not something you can choose, it’s something you are born with. Anyone can develop their psychic senses, but the deep body-level feeling of empathy is either there or not there. Perhaps I’ve focused more on the negative sides of it here, but there are wonderful sides to it too. For one, I like being able to keep tabs on the people I care about — which might sound pathological, but I assure you, I’m a Cancerian, that’s perfectly normal for us!! With a partner who knows your talent and can mind it with you, empathy can be a beautiful thing; when I’m feeling fragile and abraded by the world, I can open up through my heart chakra and go into my husband’s arms. It’s the safest place in the world and I can feel completely surrounded by his love for me. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for the whole world.

*

Recommended Reading

Spiritual Protection: A Safety Manual for Energy Workers, Healers and Psychics by Sophie Reicher

You might also look at Psychic Self Defense by Dion Fortune, but I couldn’t really get into it and found it a bit… overblown.