Sacred Grove a meditation experince

I am not new to meditation, as I have stated in my introduction, I have been a practicing pagan for a little over six years now.  Even before I joined OBOD, I based my practice and path on that of being a druid being one with nature connecting with the life and growth of spiritual experience shaped around me by the environment of the earth and tree with roots planted in the soil beneath my feet. It has often been my habit when able to enter into a grove behind my house, of pine and hickory trees.  There is a chief tree among the others a large pine that I have always felt a close connection too.  Normally I sit under this pine snuggled up against it, my back pushed against his trunk it is my favorite place to meditate, and sometimes I just sit there and watch nature flow around me, sometimes I meditate on some issue or mystery I am currently pondering.  He is a large fellow with about a four foot diameter at the base level, sometimes we are alone just he and I with the surrounding trees his friends and neighbors, others we are visited by a member of the local squirrel population, who will leap among his upper branches tossing pine needles down it; as light rain falling about me as I sit amused at its antics.  As of late our visitors have changed to a number of crows who now seem to make my meditation and rituals part of their daily routine of criticism or praise it is hard to tell with a crow if he is approving or not. Even my walks through the woods on my way to his place in the rich soil has come under their inspection and scrutiny, they have become part of my meditation an expected source of sound like a mediation aid played from a personal selection of nature for my benefit.  It is my want when sitting at his base to normally start by working on my breathing exercises, calming my inner self and once this has been accomplished I start to visualize small tendrils or roots growing from me to the ground and coming from the tree to me reaching around me from head to toe, not completely enclosing me but just reaching out like a cradling type touch.  This has been part of my meditation ritual for over six years, connected to the tree, I seek answers, peace, healing, joy or just being whichever way it leads me that day.  Even when I am miles away with work, I have always returned to this space rather in otherworld or physical life when I meditate, no matter where I am I visualize my friend the pine tree and his glade he watches over, me sitting at his trunk snuggle up against him until comfort and peace take me over.  This has gone on for over six years, but tonight it was profoundly different, I have adapted my normal meditation routine to the lesson in our bardic course work, there was not much to change really since what it was teaching me to visualize and or do I have already been doing more or less.  While I have always visualized myself in the meditation when I was not there in person, to be there sitting at the base of the tree just like when I was there, I am changed that visualization to me being, “that druid” that the lessons say I am now and should see in my meditations.  What does he look like, what is he thinking, does he notices things about his surrounding that I never did?  Mainly he wears a hooded cloak or robe, something I never did in real life looking the mysterious sage in deep thought, pondering the heavy issues of the world or the wonder of the magick of the world about him.  This has become my normal routine, as I was saying except perhaps the change in wardrobe, but tonight focusing on the lessons something profoundly different happen.  It started out like normal the complete picture I have told you, then the unexpected happen, my friend the tree slowly faded and became ethereal and ghost like until it disappeared, for a moment it existed behind me and did not at the same time. At this exact moment I became the tree, we were no longer an individual entity, we were not joined but had become something new, a new life form.  I became conscious of my roots as they delved into the rich soil, I could literally taste the soil in my mouth it is then that a thought entered my mind at some level that I should reach for the water in the soil, then a sensation both supposed and real happen my mouth filled with liquid my mouth was watering like when I am anticipating wonderful smelling food on the table. I wondered at this sensation for a time, then almost like a suggestion, it entered my mind the same way like a slow elemental thought that I should focus above as well as below, it was then that the sensation of the wind on my branches and needles hit me gently at first, my head tingled and with a numbing sensation type tickle hard to explain.  I could feel the hairs on my head in the material world stir on my head sway back and forth these also being branches and needles a crown and headdress of green, then a new sensation hit.  The sun light fell upon my pine needles warmth, nurturing life giving a sensation like and yet unlike the water from below.  This has never happen before in the entire six years I have meditated by my friend in the woods or as it was tonight in my room visualizing the whole thing before the shrine I have erected there.  I believe I have connected with my friend over the distance, or he reached out to me hearing and sensing my need, I have been having to work away now for over a year and a half and am profoundly missing my grove at home. Either that or I have reached another level of meditation perhaps both?  It was the most profound thing I have ever felt, and I would like to say thanks, to all of you, to my friend slumbering in his spot in the deep soil of my back yard many miles away and to OBOD for this lesson. 

Piping Druid

Twinkle twinkle little stars

We are all made of stardust. It sounds like a line from a poem, but there is some solid science behind this statement too: almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star.
Next time you’re out gazing at stars twinkling in the night sky, spare a thought for the tumultuous reactions they play host to. It’s easy to forget that stars owe their light to the energy released by nuclear fusion reactions at their cores. These are the very same reactions which created chemical elements like carbon or iron - the building blocks which make up the world around us.
After the Big Bang, tiny particles bound together to form hydrogen and helium. As time went on, young stars formed when clouds of gas and dust gathered under the effect of gravity, heating up as they became denser. At the stars’ cores, bathed in temperatures of over 10 million degrees C, hydrogen and then helium nuclei fused to form heavier elements.  A reaction known as nucleosynthesis.

This gives us the idea that the energy that makes up and dwells in all matter is in us as well, this is why many say the magick comes from within each of us, that is easier to understand once you realize we are made from the same fabric of the rest of creation.  Magick is the manipulation of these elements within you and the nature surrounding you, the tree, the earth, the animals, the plants and herbs we all work with are closely related to us from a cosmic birth.  It is this very connection I believe, that gives us the connection we need to cause a reaction in all matter, and spirit to commune with trees and animals is not far from communing with yourself or another person, forget normal language, element calls unto element, the ability to recognize the common makeup of all things around us.  Remember this next time you cast a circle and work a ritual that when you are calling out to nature and the things of this world for help, or need that you are calling on kindred matter, that you are related in a since to this world and all that is within it.  You will see that once you understand this, it will begin to answer your call and you will have greater influence upon the natural world.

Blessed be, PD

A path riddled with fiction

          The new budding pagan depending on path chosen and deity, will have a herculean effort before them to separate fact from fiction.  There are a few books now especially if one is following a more popular path say like Wicca, or just plain witchcraft, Buckland has books out there thou I am not overly fond of him as a teacher he is an excellent encyclopedia type medium.  Scott Cunningham is also an excellent source though I have found some people to consider him only a work for beginners that while it was okay to start with him, one should, “graduate” to deeper teachings /rolls eyes sarcastically….

          Many practices or paths have fallen into obscurity I am afraid being of the type passed down from teacher to student only by word of mouth, some indeed are lost to us and the only reference material we find is from the accounts of others who observed them, and most regrettable their opinion is often bias.  For instance the early Druids from Gaul what is now modern day France, were nearly tramped out by the Roman invasion.  They passed their knowledge by word of mouth and most was lost.  A great deal of the records we have concerning them comes from the Romans and Greeks.   I have lived long enough to see history modified, also I know that the History books are always written by the victor, he who won the war.  I am sure the early Gaul’s see the, “glorious” invasion of the Romans from quite a different view point.  One must do what one can, in the way of gleaning facts from whatever material they can find. I do not work with the Greek pantheon for instance, but as all should know between the authors of fiction, and Hollywood their story has been twisted, added to and completely made up in some cases.  What I find most alarming is that some will take these purely fictional works as being a guide or gospel if you will, not able or not willing to glean the truth if any can still be found.  Many pagan gods and goddess if their tail lent itself to a great story has been exploited this way, and while I like a good novel just as much as the next person I do not consider it a divine source of inspiration.  I am reminded of a group of people that I met once who, had run into a young eclectic witch friend of mine, and once they found out she was leading a circle of her own with one or two friends her age, they chastised her most vehemently.  They were new comers just moved into the area, but claimed to be, “High Priest of Avalon” and were toting the fictional work, “Mist of Avalon” as a holy writ upon which they base all their authority and knowledge and no one can practice in their area without their guidance and blessing.  First of all the mythical place called Avalon was a work of fiction from the author of the tales of King Author, though there is some debate upon if such a king existed named Author and there may have been one of Roman lineage, he was by no means the representation of the fictional character.  Little is known about the possible figure who inspired the story of King Arthur, a heroic monarch who has been a popular mythological and literary character for some time. It has been suggested that the real-life "Arthur" may have been a warrior/officer of Roman affiliation who led a British military force against incoming Saxon forces during the 5th to 6th centuries A.D. Still, Celtic monk Gildas wrote of the Saxon invasion in his work The Ruin and Conquest of Britain, citing the conflict at Badon Hills, and no warrior named Arthur is mentioned.
In contrast, the 6th century bard Aneirin crafted the Welsh collection of poems The Gododdin in which a heroic Arthur is spoken of. Yet with the work originally shared orally as opposed to being written down, it is impossible to ascertain if Arthur was part of the original story. Another poet, Teliesin, mentions a valiant Arthur in his work as well.
There has also been another suggestion circulated that references to Arthur were actually a way of honoring via myth a Celtic bear deity with a similar name. 

          This is just one example of which I speak, I could go on, but with the fear of putting you to sleep or worse yet glazing your eyes over with information overload I will refrain from indulging my passion.  I have worked with several deities since becoming pagan some easy to find decent information on some so obscure as to be questionable at best.  But a deity that wishes to work with you will make themselves known, I have worked with the Morrigan for quite a few years, she is a Celtic Goddess of which some is known but it is quite hard to find a great deal of information on her.  What I have been unable to pick up from books though I have gotten from her, she is not shy about telling you what you should do and how.  I have gotten the vapors a few times though, when people mistakenly take her; and the again fictional person Morgan Le Fay as being the same person.  They are not, Morgan Le Fay was a person of literary make believe put into the Author tails as sometimes his sister or what have you, for one thing this story was based on the merry old country of England.  The Morrigan was a goddess of the green country of Ireland not even remotely connected, the mistake in identity was being broadcast by a site admin from a Facebook Pagan site.  Please if you are going to be an admin and going to portray yourself as someone with knowledge do your homework..
If you wish to find out more about the Morrigan there is a priesthood of hers that has cropped back up I have read their site and it is quite a work they are doing.  Here is a great reference site on her, https://inanna.virtualave.net/morrigan.html enjoy perhaps she will call you also.
          A friend of mine discussed with me once their frustration now, of trying to follow a Norse path, she can never meditate on Thor now without picturing him from the Avengers marvel story line now, I sympathized with her but also found it quite facetious though I did not let on to her since she seem sincerely upset about it.  So in our efforts to learn new paths and new deities let us strive with our best effort to sift through fact and fiction as best we may, I know it is not easy, but to teach what is obviously a Hollywood fictional representation as knowledge handed down from the ages is not fair to you or your students. 

Blessed Be
PD