Where am I now?

This is the second in our journey of three parts.  We've walked the path to the now, and before setting off on the branching paths in the garden of Destiny it behooves us to examine the moment.

This might take some time.

I've recently rejoined ADF.  The production values for their membership materials have gone up significantly since I first joined back in '98.  I haven't yet begun to read through them but I've thus far gleaned that the Dedicant's Program is still a thing, a thing I intend to begin Soon[tm].

I'll also be joining the Troth within the next week.  They don't permit training in their clergy program until you've been a member for a year, which is fortuitous timing as the Dedicant's Program is one year long.

(This is arguably not the time of year to be undertaking new endeavors, but all we have is Now.)

I've begun to read up on shamanism, seidr, and the runes.  I don't set aside a lot of my vanishingly-small leisure time for reading, I'm sad to say, so such research is slow going.

I can envision starting a grove again, in the future, but I first need to get a tighter grip on the things I believe before I could satisfactorily articulate a vision for such a thing.  It may come to pass that I decide that the priesthood is not for me.  It's equally likely that I'll decide, or remember, that being a priest is my function here.

But I have to confess, I'm not sure why I'm doing these things.  And that's been bothering me.

I have the sense that developing a relationship with the divine will enrich my life.  I remember when my faith was strong and the way to the other worlds was easily walked, and I remember being happier then.  Whether or not this can be attributed to the presence of the divine in my life, I cannot say -- it's possible that I was happier because I had friends, love, a social group, all things that I'm presently lacking.  Only one way to find out, of course.

More than that, though, I feel that delving into the mysteries is important, though I can't put my finger on exactly why I feel that way.  Sure, I seek power, but I'm not sure why.  I seek knowledge, but I'm not sure why.  I'm trying to figure these things out at the same time I'm walking this path, mostly because I like to know "why."

But ah, which path do I walk?  Saying "a Druidic one" is kind of a pat answer, since I'm not sure anyone can fully describe what a Druidic path really is.  And in any case, as much as I embrace the label, I'm a little uncomfortable doing so what with my Norse leanings.

On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to separate the two: keeping Druidism as outlook and practice, while seeking to develop a relationship with the Norse deities.

Let me talk about what I believe, what I know, and perhaps that'll help underline why I'm conflicted.

1. There is a Creator, who is remote and unknowable.

This is Deistic thinking, but nevertheless I believe it to be true.  I believe that whatever created the cosmos resides outside the cosmos.  It cannot be known, it cannot be understood, it cannot be interacted with, and it does not care for the particular fate of any being within the cosmos.  This is not the Christian God, nor is it Allah, or any other prime deity; though some aspects I've described here have bled through to those lesser beings.

I tend to refer to this being/principle as God, simply out of cultural custom and a sense of poetry; references to God below should not be taken as referring to the Christian, or any other, prime deity.

2. There are many gods.

I'm a hard polytheist.  I believe that the most likely scenario is that any being conceived of as a god is probably actually a god, though some of them get more attention than others.  As to the nature of the gods?  That one's harder to pin down.  My current thinking on the subject is that the gods are, in a sense, memes -- information patterns, encoded symbolic teachings, though imbued with a sentience of their own.  The gods are able to interact with mortals, and might even be able to influence fate or events in the physical world -- but any such workings are, in my opinion, just as likely to be the unconscious workings of the beneficiary.

I believe that man (thinkers, free-willed beings) creates the gods, and the gods rely on man in order to exist.  Nevertheless, the gods are far wiser and more knowledgeable than any man could hope to be, and are therefore worthy of the utmost respect.

3. God is he who groks.

To grok is to understand something so thoroughly that it becomes a part of the thinker, and the thinker becomes a part of the thing.  It goes beyond knowledge to an instinctual understanding.  God, the Creator, is he who groks -- and so is man.  Man is, therefore, God, endowed with free will and the ability to choose.  Man creates his own reality, layered atop and interacting with the Real cosmos.  

4. Magic is real

We define "magic" here as "interacting with and influencing the world via non-physical/empirical means."  It is a manifestation of the previous principle -- all people, to a greater or lesser degree, create their own reality through the choices they make, but all people also have access to influence the Real through their own will.

I suspect that Plato was onto something when he described the world of Forms in The Republic.  As a computer programmer, I see a lot of similarity between the Forms and object classes.  I suspect that magic, broadly put, is a means of accessing "hidden functions" that are contained within the Forms.  

5. The Earth is an egg

And here we begin to move into a bit of Gnostic thinking.  The Gnostic idea of the world as a prison holds some appeal to me, but I think there's more to it than that.  I believe in the sentience of the Earth (given my prior experiences I'd be foolish not to), so I don't look down on the physical world the way most Gnostics would.  However, I do believe that the physical world, like an egg, is a cage -- it nurtures and sustains us, but only so that we can grow strong enough to break free.  A chick who remains within the egg eventually starves to death.  It must hatch, and so must we.

6. The ultimate purpose of life is to return to the divine.

I don't know how humans got here.  I don't know if the cosmos was created because the Creator was lonely, or if we are fragments of God trapped here by the Demiurge, or if sentience is an emergent quality of the cosmos, or what.  What I do feel sure of is that the ultimate purpose of life is apotheosis -- the return to and union with the divine.  I do not know how this can be achieved.  I believe that there are manifold paths that lead to the summit of the mountain, and which one a person walks depends greatly on that person.

I believe that the purpose of the Kindreds (gods, spirits, and ancestors) is to guide us, to teach us, to help us learn how to climb the mountain.  The purpose of the Earth, meanwhile, is to sustain us until we are strong enough to make the journey.  She is to be revered and honored as Mother to us all, but all children must grow up and leave the nest eventually.

Ultimately I think the way to the divine lies in grokking God, which introduces a paradox -- as I stated in my first premise, God/the Creator is remote and unknowable, and therefore cannot be fully grokked.  So where does that leave us?  I'm not sure yet.

That was actually easier than I thought it would be.  Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this doesn't leave me fitting neatly into any particular category.  This is not, in itself, important, but it does make seeking a community of like-minded believers somewhat troublesome.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that everything that I've described here is a metaphysic -- an attempt to describe the manner in which the cosmos is ordered..  Interestingly, most pagan faiths don't deal in metaphysics so much as they do in ethics and virtue -- right behavior and values.  Certainly there are attempts to describe the Creation and that which comes after life in the myths of each culture, but these descriptions are typically more structural than they are metaphysical.  (It's the difference between describing a tree in three dimensions, and establishing that there are three dimensions to begin with.)

So to summarize, I suppose that "where I am" is preparing to undertake the journey of coming to know the Norse gods in a Druidic fashion, and hopefully not annoying them by so doing.  I think I also have to re-learn how to think Druidically, so to speak -- I can't describe how it used to be but I feel as though I'm out of practice doing it.

Nevertheless, we must begin.

The road so far

I've been identifying as a Druid since I was a teenager.  It was an issue of Wired that brought me into the fold, oddly enough -- it was the October '97 issue and within there was an article on Wicca and online sources therefor.  For some reason I decided to run a search for "druid" instead.  From the very first site I read, I knew.  It was like coming home.

I joined ADF fairly swiftly after that, as soon as I could get a PO Box (since my parents weren't exactly the tolerant type).  Organizing a grove came soon after.  It was always tough going -- the pagan community in my city isn't all that healthy, never has been, and Druids in particular have always been thin on the ground.  It's a witchy city.  So it goes.  But we had our successes.  At one point there were close to twenty people attending the rituals.

After three years, frustration took its toll and I decided to step down as grove organizer.  The person who took over for me essentially let the grove die after that, and ever since then, I've been a solitary.

I was ordained to the Reformed Druids of North America in 2002.  During my vigil, I received a personal visit from the Earth Mother.  Not in body, only in spirit, but that was enough.  I don't think I can say I've ever doubted the existence of the divine since.

Not that I've done my duties, I'm sad to say.

I've held onto a token faith since my ordination -- I haven't been practicing but the beliefs have remained.  Not that they haven't evolved, mind you, but ever since '97 I haven't been able to let go of the "Druid" concept.  But practicing?  No, not so much.  I let my ADF membership lapse right around the time I got married, and I dropped off the face of the Earth as far as the Reform was concerned as well.  Since then I've occasionally tried to "start up" again, but nothing has really stuck up until the present day.

A digression.

I can't say exactly when my interest in the Aes and Van began.  I was familiar with the god-forms before coming into paganism, from Final Fantasy and Sandman and various other sources.  I'm almost entirely Germanic by blood, as is the bulk of Western Europe.  German and English figure prominently into my heritage, as does Irish -- but the Irish comes by way of the Viking settlers, so it's not unreasonable to speculate that my ancestors were almost entirely folk of the North.  Is this why I've been drawn to those legends, moreso than any other?  Possibly, but I can't say for sure.

I've been struggling with that -- the fact that I can't help but identify as a Druid, but my "divine allegiances," such as they are, are to the gods of my ancestors.  Reconciling the two satisfactorily is a challenge, one that I haven't quite mastered yet.

Digression over.

I read Stranger in a Strange Land around 2006, and I'd have to characterize it as a life-changing event.  Even to this day I seek a nest, though I must admit that cynicism has taken root after years of failure.  The last nest I was in imploded traumatically, and ever since then I can't say as I've been that close to anyone.  Not for lack of trying, but so it goes.

I flirted briefly with the idea of starting a new grove last autumn, but once I became a truck driver I had to put those plans in abeyance.  I'm still driving trucks, so for the foreseeable future I will by necessity remain solitary.  Nevertheless, I have been feeling the pull of the Godhead once more, and I am at the moment trying to find the path again after wandering in the woods for so long.