The Endless Knot

By Yvonne Aburrow

Paperback, 49 Pages

Price: £5.99 

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Poetry of place, experience, the seasons, and the sacred. 

Written over many years, these poems are the distillation of experiences of ritual, landscape and mythology. 

Lovers of landscape and nature will enjoy this collection. 

Also available as an eBook (suitable for Kindle and other formats)

Happy birthday Will

It's St George's Day (and has been since 1222).

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' ~ Henry V, 3:1

Historically St George was a third-century martyr. He acquired his dragon-slaying reputation from the Golden Legend. He has only been England's patron saint since 1415. The original patron saint of England was St Edmund.

St George is also the patron of many other countries and organisations. In other countries, George is associated with greenery, and is sometimes conflated with Khidr.

St George is also associated with the Crusades. Not the ideal association, to my mind, since the Crusades were a disaster for interfaith relations, and a brutal and bloody chapter in the history of warfare (and their reverberations are still being felt today).

It is also Shakespeare's birthday today - and personally I find Shakespeare more inspiring, as the creator of great literature. Happy birthday Will.

Shakespeare's plays (and those of his contemporaries) defied the unities of time, place and action, and illustrated a vast panoply of human life. Many of his words and expressions have passed into the English language; he has more quotations in the dictionary of quotations than any other writer, and his characters are a byword for the great tragic and comic experiences of life, love and death. He also wrote a lot of poetry and plays that inspire Pagans and have inspired other fantastical literature. Think of the Three Witches in Macbeth, based on the Three Norns of Norse mythology; Mercutio's speech in Romeo and Juliet; Herne the Hunter in The Merry Wives of Windsor; the whole of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and much more.

What about a patron deity of England? I would suggest Herne the Hunter (often conflated with Cernunnos), Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow, or perhaps Brigantia, goddess of sovereignty, or Britannia, a personification of Britain.

still 100% Pagan

I hereby certify myself still 100% Pagan, or should that be NeoPagan?

Either way, I enjoy Taoism, love of nature, animism, non-theism, pantheism, compassion for all life, communing with the Universe, and seeking to balance myself with the Way of Nature (variously known as the Tao, Yin and Yang, Fire and Frost, Wyrd, etc). I affirm that we are all related (mitakuye oyasin). There was no fall, only an arising. The Universe is the Beloved.

Having re-lived the entire religious history of Europe in the past two months, I don't recommend it! From Pagan Polytheist to Orthodox Christian (missed out Catholicism, but waved to St Francis as I rushed past him) to a vague protestant feeling, to Unitarian, to non-theist, humanist, romantic animist NeoPagan. But I'm very glad to have found the Unitarians, where being a non-theist Pagan makes perfect sense, given their humanist and universalist tendencies and interest in wisdom from other traditions. Anyway, being a non-theist is excellent, I heartily recommend it. As Terry Pratchett so wisely said, witches don't believe in the gods, it would be like believing in the postman.

Occam's Razor

A commenter on the facebook version of the "label, schmabel" post pointed out that the list seemed a bit complex, and said that for her the bottom line was whether the belief system was oppressive or empowering for women and lesbians.

That is part of the bottom line, for me. For instance, I don't see how women can be empowered without liberating men from the oppressive structures of patriarchy too. Another friend lives by Socrates' question, "How shall we live a good life?" which also seems like a good test. The spiritual is political, as many people have pointed out.

I guess my "bottom line" or Occam's Razor would be "Does it contribute to the well-being of all beings?" (including women, men, LGBT, queer, animal, tree, discarnate entity, Gaia, etc.) But one still needs to unpack exactly what that means and how it works out in practice, hence my previous complex list. But I can see how the list would seem weird if you didn't know what my bottom line was.

what religion am I?

According to the Belief-O-Matic:

1.	Neo-Pagan (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (91%)
3.	New Age (91%)
4.	Mahayana Buddhism (90%)
5.	Unitarian Universalism (86%)
6.	Reform Judaism (75%)
7.	Sikhism (73%)
8.	Jainism (72%)
9.	Theravada Buddhism (71%)
10.	Baha'i Faith (70%)
11.	Taoism (67%)
12.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (66%)
13.	Hinduism (63%)
14.	Orthodox Quaker (61%)
15.	Secular Humanism (59%)
16.	New Thought (58%)
17.	Scientology (58%)
18.	Orthodox Judaism (51%)
19.	Islam (44%)
20.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (40%)
21.	Nontheist (32%)
22.	Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
23.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (30%)
24.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (29%)
25.	Eastern Orthodox (19%)
26.	Roman Catholic (19%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (17%)

There you go, I am 100% NeoPagan, 91% Liberal Quaker, 90% Mahayana Buddhist, and 86% UU. Maybe I am a Quaking Penguin, er sorry, Quaker Pagan. I resent being 91% New Age, though. And I'm only 67% Taoist, that's strange. I find it significant that my top 11 religions all acknowledge the validity of other religions as paths to the Divine (that's a big issue for me).

the journey

A humorous look at the snakes and ladders board of life...

Phase 1. There you are, trucking along, minding your own business, when wham! something happens to jolt you out of your complacency - maybe a contact with the numinous, or something that upsets or expands your current paradigm.

Phase 2. You try to ignore it, but it just comes back, louder and more insistent.

Phase 3. You give in to it and get involved. Suddenly all your prayers are answered (evangelical types), all your spells work (occult types)! "Woo-hoo", you think to yourself, "I've found the truth". "I must spread the word" (evangelical types); act all superior because "I know everything" (occult types); become a hermit (mystical types); or go on a pray-a-thon (CU types).

Phase 4. Your prayers (or your magic) stop working. Setback! "The God/Goddess doesn't love me any more / I've lost my super occult powers."

Phase 5. The pit of despair. Long dark teatime of the soul. Doubt. Assault by "demons" in the wilderness. Wrestling with angels.

Phase 6. You meet an inner guide, possibly an enlightened one. Possible responses to this:

• Get massively involved in the tradition associated with the guide, assuming it is the Only Truth. As in the game of Snakes and Ladders (originally an Islamic analogy for the spiritual journey) go back to phase one.
• Decide that all your journey prior to this point was worthless because you have now found the Truth, and previously you were deluded by the "powers of darkness". Go back to phase one.
  
• Realise that all the guides that have ever appeared to humanity are messengers from the Divine Source. Proceed to phase seven.
  

Phase 7. Further up and further in. Acknowledge that all religions have the potential to facilitate contact with the Divine. Joyful embrace of the Divine Beloved. Find a tradition that resonates with your new inner reality.

Phase 8. Decide to both serve the world and enjoy its beauty. Share the blessing.

Observant readers may notice the similarity of this with Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey. I have seen facets of this journey in accounts of Christian mystics, the prayer lives of Christian bloggers, the spiritual journeys of Pagans and occultists. With variations, it seems quite widespread - perhaps even universal. Some people get stuck in one of the phases for a long time, in others they may last only a few days. And the journey may be a spiral around the mountain - we may revisit these phases several times in different ways.

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be." ~ Alan Watts

Unitarians

I went to the Unitarian church on Sunday and it was so beautiful that it made me cry.

All their hymns were about affirming that the truth can be found in all religions and in films and books and poetry too, and there was a strong sense of the mystical oneness of the Divine. One of their booklets mentions the dictum of The Life of Brian - "you must all think for yourselves". (Which is also the message of Project Ijtihad).

When I came out I was walking on air - it was fantastic!

mental fight

Mental Fight by Ben Okri
A few selected extracts:

Already, the future is converging with the past.
Already the world is converging.
The diverse ways of the world
Will create wonderful new forms,
Lovely cultural explosions
In the centuries to come.
Already I sense future forms of art,
Of painting, sculpture, humour,
Already I sense future novels,
Plays, poems, dances.
Already I sense the great orchestras
Of humanity, a world symphony,
A world jam, in which the diverse
Genius of the human race -
It's rich tapestry of differences -
Will combine, weave, heighten,
Harmonise all its varied ways
And bring about a universal flowering
In all the vast numbers of disciplines
And among the unnumbered people.
Already I can hear this distant music
Of the future,
The magic poetry of time,
The distillation of all our different gifts.

Will you be at the harvest,
Among the gatherers of new fruits?
Then you must begin today to remake
Your mental and spiritual world,
And join the warriors and celebrants
Of freedom, realisers of great dreams.

You can't remake the world
Without remaking yourself
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.
We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see the world differently,
To see ourselves more clearly.
Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfill the golden prophecies
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.

We are better than that.
We are greater than our despair.
The negative aspects of humanity
Are not the most real and authentic;
The most authentic thing about us
Is our capacity to create, to overcome,
To endure, to transform, to love,
And to be greater than our suffering.
We are best defined by the mystery
That we are still here, and can still rise
Upwards, still create better civilisations,
That we can face our raw realities,
And that we will survive
The greater despair
That the greater future might bring.

From "Mental Fight - an anti-spell for the 21st century", Phoenix House 1999

posted on the Facebook / Change.org group CHOSA by Jared S.