paganism | The Blog of Baphomet

I’m sitting alone by a roaring fire, a glass of delicious ale nearly finished, and all the fairy lights twinkling throughout the house. The darkest nights are upon us, regular as clockwork the Earth swings around the Sun, now our planet’s northern axis points 23.5^o away from our constantly shining star. The ivy strands bedecking the walls are dark green signs of the eternal forces of nature alive even in the darkness.

The hearth of the home

This time of night’s pre-eminence has much to teach us; the preciousness of daylight hours, with the amount of things we can do outside currently restricted to a few activities, such as chopping wood, a brief walk by the sea, a few minutes staring at the sky and the birds.

Despite being alone physically I feel the warmth of my communities, electronically delivered words and pictures connect us (in addition to the more aetheric links that provide constant attachment). I see in my mind’s eye all the bonfires, ceremonies, parties, and people beside their own hearths, both with others and alone like myself. Some will have raised a glass to the Dies Natalis of the unconquerable sun, others barely aware of the imminent turn to lengthening daylight.

During these few days, the day length stands (to the casual observer at least) still. Solstice, a pause in the usual, a time outside of time. A chance to look at Life, our own and the world at large. A more homely festive day than the official New Year, a less pressured one than Christmas. This ancient anniversary gives us, whether secular or pagan by inclination, a chance to spend it as we Will.

My own ritual is described, in early 21^st century style, by my facebook status: “Celebrating Solstice tonight (astronomically correct moment 2303h, or, 1503h down south). Gonna light a fire, say thankful words and direct attention to what I want to happen in the next cycle around our nearest star (ie prayers). Also, a good time to bring to mind those who existed in my past, those who will exist in my future, the ways life paths intertwine. This year I feel especially aware of how people we never meet can affect us so deeply, in their influence upon those we do. Hoping that I am mindful of how my own words and actions may spread out. Wishing a Merry Yule etc, to all my fabulous fb friends.”

We have talked of this practice of thankful prayers before on the Blog of Baphomet, and whilst I do this near enough every day at present, this night has a special significance.

Setting aside special time, sacred space, to stand aside from the tracks we run along everyday, gives us a chance to reflect upon whatever role we take in the timeless play that we can regard as the Mythic. What do you do? Not in your job, or even your family; what do you do when you perform your own unique skillset amongst the communities and groups you frequent? In your neighbourhood, in online forums, in social gatherings? I have lucky to have had my role given a title by others, as The Oracle, humorously meant yet appropriate; I say what I see, a quality which has not always made me many friends, but has kept me those whose worth I value.

Tonight, I shall take time out to give thanks for the many great mythic characters who surround me. The storytellers, the bards, the creators and organisers, the artists and music makers, the talkers and listeners, those who really know about mechanics, information flows, group dynamics, communication, style, movement, health and food, who generously share their knowledge. The tidy people who I have learnt much from in recent years, and those for whom sprawling chaos gives great joy. The kind ones, the comforters, the bestowers of gifts both tangible and otherwise. Those who have shown me the value of sharing one’s emotions. as well as thoughts. And of course those who taught me to make the fire, in so many ways.

I could give these friends names from myths, and dress their figures in the raiment of gods and goddesses, of priests and priestesses, I could compose paeans of praise to them for their glorious richness of engagement with life.

For now though as I type this in front of the fire which I lit from the candle flame which I lit as the daylight faded, I can only give what I write here now, a pencil sketch of what I might do later on.

Merry Solstice to the amazing characters who I am lucky to share this world with, those I have met, and so many I have yet to meet!

And I also think of those who I will never meet with in days to come, their memories aglow with the fires they tended whilst alive. All of us influence so many more people than we can ever know. My own intention for the next year; to bear this in mind; well, as often as possible… 😉

Autumn comes to the valley in which I live. The warm sunshine is still (Sunna be praised!) with us, but the pivot point of the September equinox has passed. Mist shrouds the trees in the morning the leaves of the willows fill up with yellow and fall down upon the moist green earth.

This is the season of the spiders, when these miraculous beasts spin their webs between the fast dying stems of grasses. In common with many humans I deeply admire the tenacity and technical skill of spiders. I watched one recently in a still-scented honeysuckle bush, dealing with a yellowed leaf that had become entangled in its web. She (I usually think of spiders as ‘she’, because reasons) carefully made fast some gossamer lines. She ran new strands from her spinnerets and carefully cut other silks. The leaf went swinging out from the face of the web, dangling, quite literally, from a thread. Then she sat for a while, me watching intently to see if she would slice the final connection. She didn’t, and looking down, I could imagine why she had stopped. The leaf hung now away from the prime killing zone of her trap, it was no longer an impediment to her. Had she cut the final strand there was a distinct possibility that the leaf would have become caught on one of the lower main strands supporting her web. If the leaf landed in this position it would have been very hard to remove, and she could have risked the structural integrity of the whole network. Instead she chose to let this now minor irritation stay, to make the calculation between risk and benefit and decide she had done enough.

Araneus diadematus hangin’ out

As in the fabled story of Robert the Bruce the spider is an instructor. In the context of the spider I observerd, she teaches an approach to the things in your life that are irritations, things that get in your way. These things may be social issues (your tiresome ex-partner is still obsessively bad-mouthing you), physical difficulties (you notice that your back problems are getting worse, inevitable as you age) or more esoteric problems. The lesson of the spider (in the honeysuckle) is that you really don’t always need to finish the job. Sometimes good enough is simply good enough. If you’ve already done all that’s needed to get your irksome ex out of your circle of friends, if you’re doing exercises aimed at strengthening your poorly spine and so on, then that may be sufficient. Save your energy for what matters (in her case sucking the life blood from flies) and strengthen your core. Don’t waste attention on that which is good enough, especially if, by trying to completely resolve the problem, you risk ending up with diminishing returns or even upsetting what you have already achieved.

Meanwhile inside my house another lesson from the spiders. A voluptuous garden spider had spun her web right across my kitchen window while I was away at a conference in Cambridge. Upon my return I noticed her handiwork, a lovely circular web of almost Platonic perfection. While I do groove on that Goth style I was minded to remove her until I considered the implications of doing so. On my windowsill (which is pretty deep, it being an 18th century building) sit a number of pot plants. These include aloe vera (essential medicine for minor burns), various exotic cacti and more delicate plants. One in particular is very susceptible to insect attack (this beautiful herb reproduces by getting humans to make cuttings of it, and rarely flowers or sets seed). So why move my arachnid guest, especially when she is protecting my indoor garden?

Another spider who made an appearance in my living room last night was a giant house spider. As autumn arrives so the males of this species leave dark and unmolested webs in the corners of buildings. They race across the prairie of the carpet in the hope of finding a mate. Typically we encounter these chaps when they get stuck in the bath. Whether spotted in the tub or on the prowl along the floor there is a tendency for folk to capture them and ‘set them free’ in the garden. This reaction is understandable. We think of our homes as ours, they are the modernised caves in which we dwell. We’ve bought and paid for them and any other living things inside (pets, plants, children etc) are there because we’ve put them there. Spiders are also, for possibly evolutionary reasons, creatures than many of us are nervous of. Best get their weird eight-legged forms out of our house.

However again the spider has a teaching, and that is that all our spaces are in fact shared. Whether we’re talking about the immense amount of microbial life that swarms inside and upon our bodies, the dust mite denizens of our beds, or our much bigger (and therefore more obvious) eight-legged housemates. We are actually surrounded by other lifeforms all the time. There are very few environments in which humans find themselves where other lifeforms don’t exist (there are perhaps even bacteria on the outside of the international space station as well as those in the guts of the crew). Typically you’re never more than a couple of meters away from an insect and of course the very air we breathe is seething with bacterial beings. Speaking of spiders, several species are specifically linked to human dwellings. We are part of nature, we make and shape habitats, and in any given environmental niche lifeforms will find a foothold; fleas, silverfish, rats, pigeons, foxes, hawks, mice….the list goes on…

Eratigena atrica on the prowl in my front room…

While some of us might imagine that we have few dealings with other creatures in our day-to-day lives actually, if we stop and look, other non-human persons are all around us. These facts are one of the considerations that makes that old chestnut, that modern pagans are necessarily cut-off from nature, untenable. We can learn from the attercop racing across the kitchen floor, that this is his territory too. Paying attention to our needs, as I did with the arthropod who now protects my house plants, we can often enter simple, mutually beneficial relationships. And as we observe and interact with these beings, these spirits, we can learn from their wisdom.