3 posts tagged “new hermetics”
It’s been almost a year since I received my First Degree in the Ancient Order of Druids in America, at Alban Elued, the autumnal equinox. It’s been about six months since I began to think of myself as working on my Second Degree requirements, so this seems like a good time to review what those requirements are and how I’m doing at them.
The first requirement, the Earth Path, recapitulates the requirements of the Candidate year leading to the First Degree: nature awareness, seasonal celebration, and meditation. My home in a very green urban neighborhood and my regular walk to work continue to provide me with lots of opportunities to be aware of nature, to observe it, and to learn about it. I still don’t read enough about natural history or science, but I flatter myself that direct experience counts for a lot in my tradition. I observe the sun and moon, wind and weather patterns, plant and tree growth, and the habits of birds, first-hand.
I also continue to search for ways to diminish any negative impact of my lifestyle on the Earth. One good thing I began to do was to save bottled drinks I consume at my desk at work and take them to the recycling bin in the lunchroom. I’m trying to drink less bottled stuff, period, and more water, but I do enjoy my Diet Pepsi so.
I’ve observed a full cycle of Druid holy days at least once, more like one and a half times, but I’m still tweaking my ritual forms. I’m essentially confined to my home for ritual space; in order to hold an outdoor rite, I’d have to pack up all the necessities and carry them on public transportation, and then hope I could walk far enough to find a private spot. I can do very simple, very basic offerings outdoors near my home, or I can satisfy my urge for pomp and splendor with a more elaborate indoor rite, but I can’t have it both ways. Still, I’m lucky to have a handsome tree right outside my front door.
I’ve been meditating on the Ogham for nearly a year now. The Ogham
is often referred to as the “tree calendar” or “tree alphabet”, but
while it can be used in those ways, it’s better seen as a Druidic
equivalent to the Tree of Life in Kabbalah: a magical filing system
which connects everything and to which everything can be connected.
While each individual few or letter of the Ogham has a corresponding
plant (some are trees, some not), it also has a bird, an animal, a
color, a tool, an art, a castle or fortress, and other equivalents,
according to the varying sources. Meditating on the Ogham is a way of
organizing what I already know about Celtic lore, the Druid Revival,
magic, deities, and wisdom stories of all kinds into a coherent whole.
“The
element of Water represents the emotions, and in the Druid tradition it
also relates to growth and the development of wisdom.” The Water
Path is about learning to mentor, learning to help others find a viable
spiritual path. I haven’t done much toward these requirements, but I’m
about to take a workshop that I think will go a long way toward them.
Back in 2005-2006 I studied the New Hermetics
system of magical training with its creator, author Jason Augustus
Newcomb, as my mentor. This training was one of my qualifications for
my AODA First Degree; it also qualifies me to take the Advanced
workshop that is being offered this month, at the fall equinox. An
amazing coalescence of circumstances, motivated by the generosity of
several persons, has made it possible for me to attend this workshop;
once I have, I will be certified to train new students myself, under
Jason’s supervision, and that should cover my Water Path requirement.
The Fire Path requires me to study and master the standard form of Opening and Closing a Grove and the Initiation of a Candidate. I’m nearly there with the former, but the latter falls under the “still to be done” heading. I’m also required to design my own set of seasonal rituals, and I have a feeling that may be happening soon.
The Air Path requirements are for various kinds of study, backed up by short academic papers, as are the requirements of the Spirit Path. All of those requirements are still in the future, but the Second Degree must take a minimum of two years, and it can always run longer.
Finally, there is the Spiral requirements. The Spirals are seven arts or disciplines traditionally associated with Druidry since the Revival: music, poetry, divination, healing, magic, sacred geometry, and earth mysteries. I covered magic in my First Degree by taking the New Hermetics course; I’ve finally settled on music and divination for my Second Degree. I’ve been doing a daily reading of the Ogham for several months now, and this fall I’m returning to the church choir where I used to sing. I expect the fairly heavy demands of that position will spur me to do some reading about music and thus fulfill all the requirements for that Spiral.
The secret of the AODA curriculum for the degrees is not to look at the requirements and puzzle out how to fulfill them, but to look at your spiritual life and practice and see how it meets the requirements. That’s what makes this curriculum so great. Now that I’ve done what I just recommended, I feel much better about my life and my druidry.
I've been thinking a lot about this question. After all, I've vacillated between Anglican Christianity and some kind of Neopaganism since I read The Spiral Dance at the age of thirteen (and I still have that first edition, gold design on red cover). Why is it that finally, at the age of forty, I've apparently stopped vacillating and settled on the Pagan side of the fence?
Here are the reasons I've come up with so far:
1. I hadn't been getting anything from my Christian spirituality for a long time. Choir has become a burden rather than a joy; despite my love for the repertoire and the act of choral singing, by the end of the choir season, I feel like I need an organ transplant--my insides are just hollow. Choral singing always used to generate tremendous amounts of energy for me; to be honest, it used to put me into an ecstatic state, and that's just not the case any more. I don't think that's changed only because of age (though I suspect that has something to do with it). I think it's at least partly because I'm no longer 100% behind the words I'm singing, and partly, perhaps, because the liturgical setting and the tight schedule of preparing one mass and two anthems every week precludes doing some of the most challenging and enjoyable repertoire. With my pleasure in the music drying up, there's nothing else to hang onto any more.
2. I found a supportive pagan community. Even though my contact with AODA folks has only been online (I think the nearest neighbor is in Pennsylvania, an hour or more away), it's been a tremendously supportive, helpful experience, contact with people who care, who had no problems with my identifying as Druid and Christian, and who actually have knowledge and experience I lack and know how to share it effectively, without condescension.
3. I found an effective system of magical training that works for me. I only wish I'd found the New Hermetics twenty years ago, or even twelve years ago. Its streamlined, "nondenominational" techniques are easily applicable to Druid magic and ritual, which is what I need. And Jason is a gifted mentor and teacher, again, someone who's actually more advanced than I am (authority figures who actually know more than I do have been hard to come by in the Church).
4. Polytheism gets results. My other druid group (which shall be nameless) irks the hell out of me much of the time, but their theories and methods of contacting the gods through sacrifice *work*. Making offerings with prayer establishes contacts, and then the gods start to take notice and begin to tell you what they want you to give them, and what they want you to do.
5. Since I got involved with AODA and studying the New Hermetics, I've landed a full-time job, we've moved to an apartment with a sane landlord, and we've settled our debts honorably. These are all big positive changes and all in the area of life I find most problematic, the Earth Element, the realm of Pentacles or Discs in Tarot, of health, finances, home, food, the body. Again, pagan and magical stuff has gotten results.
I'm always going to be influenced by having been an Episcopalian. The Church gave me beautiful language and literature, rich stories, gorgeous music, and a model of good ritual. My tradition's theology has always emphasized the goodness of the body, the dignity of work, the natural world as a shrine of the Divine Presence. I'm not the only person who has recently transitioned from Anglican to Druid; I just hope I stay out of the news!
I am on a number of email lists that discuss various spiritual paths. Druidry, Gnosticism, magic and hermeticism, and the life of a small religious order in the Episcopal Church are among the topics I follow. Sometime ago, a wise older woman who is on several of my lists posted the following words:
One teacher along the Way taught me to carry a trident of power
within myself. The left tine is the Path you follow that helps you
get in touch with your intuitive self – more feminine or Yin. The
right tine is the active, conceptive path – Yang or Masculine. The
center tine is your Path with Heart – a true path that enables you
to hear the song of yourself. This is the path that allows you to
walk your talk and stay in your center in this World. The left/right
paths may change, depending upon your life's circumstances, but your
Path with Heart in this lifetime remains true.
Gareth Knight, a well-known occult author and member of the Society of the Inner Light, writes similarly about the Society's founder, Dion Fortune, that she followed a threefold path: the Green Ray of nature mysticism, the Orange Ray of hermeticism and ceremonial magic, and the Violet Ray of Christian devotion and mysticism. He connected these to the three paths that leave Malkuth, the sphere of manifest reality, on the Tree of Life: the path to Netzach, the sphere of feeling, the path to Hod, the sphere of intellect, and the path to Yesod, the sphere of imagination, which rises straight to the crown of the Tree.
I have come to realize that something very similar is true for me. While I identify myself these days primarily as a Druid, and specifically a Druid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, my path is not confined to emulating the Druids of the ancient Celtic peoples, or even the Druids of the eighteenth-century Revival to whom my order traces its lineage. I also am a practitioner of the Western Magical Tradition in the form of the New Hermetics, and, somewhat reluctantly, an Anglican.
I do not say I am a Christian. Not any more. I am no longer engaged with the ridiculous power struggles going on in most Christian denominations; I am no longer at all satisfied with the road-map of human experience provided by Christian theology. Perhaps I am just too frightened by the rise of fundamentalists all over the map, in every religion and denomination--and they exist in Neopaganism, too. But I have realized that while I may not believe in the Virgin Birth, I do not want to give up Nativity scenes and Christmas carols; while I may not believe in the Resurrection, I do not want to give up the great rite that is the Easter Vigil. I do not want to give up the stories, pictures, music, and poetry which, for me, have long been the most important things about Christianity.
I make a rather bad Anglican, by a lot of people's standards--and no better a Pagan, by a lot of other people's standards. By my own standards, I am walking a threefold path that is intellectual and creative, artistic and connective, and spiritual and mystical, all at once. And the thing for which I am most grateful is that in my Druid Order, I am wholly within my rights to do so. AODA does not require me to be a Pagan in order to be a Druid.
Soon, I shall have my initiation into the First Degree of AODA. And soon, I will start attending Mass again. Meanwhile, I have meditation and magic and prayer. It's all part of the threefold path.
