Tag Archives: Pagan

Yuletide

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  On the late afternoon of December 21st, he had returned, and with Runestone, they led the vigil in the old stone circle above the stockade and celebrated the Winter Solstice, and the going down of the sun on the shortest day of the year.

  Rune had smiled with joy as they headed back to the Mere in the darkness, and placed a fat heavy log on the fire to banish the darkness and celebrated with wine and ale. It was a time of family, and together they decorated the house with fresh holly and mistletoe, and Rune laughed with delight as Robbie carried in a large potted pine, to decorate with small decorations made of woven straw, and biscuits hung on red ribbon.

  The tree was topped with an elaborately made five pointed star of silver, which was their first ever Yule gift as a couple, and made by Jade’s skilled hand.

   All round the house candles burned, casting a warm flickering glow across everything, as the house rang to the sound of Rune, as she giggled with happiness while she prepared the meal for all the family who would be arriving shortly.

            Taken from “The Queen of the Violet Isle, HTTK Book Four.”

Green Man Yule.

Yule for me is time of darkness and light. At this time of year I always yearn to be alone and reflect on my year and my past, something that is not as possible now as I have a family. Before 2008 when I worked alone, I would always close up my shop at the end of the day of selling Christmas trees and wreaths, and walk home in the cold crisp air. On many occasions, I would divert from the road, and walk along the dark silent canal pathway, my mind lost in thoughtful reflection of my year. I think it was on one of those long walks home that I formulated what was to become the opening passage of book four, a section of which is at the top of this article.

The above passage from HTTK BK four, is based on real life events, and something I was a part of in my teenage years with a wonderful group of hippies, who changed my life, and showed me a way of living that was more in tune with who I was, and less in tune with the expectations of my family at that time. We numbered eight, of which today only three of us still live spread across three different countries, and on this day more than ever, I remember them and miss them dearly.

One figure more than any stands out for me, for she was the oldest of all us, and in many ways she became the focus of the character Steph in my books. I shall not name her out of respect for her family, for she walked from this realm and into another many years ago, and yet such was the power of her kindness and wisdom, I have never forgotten her, an feel privileged that I had a part in her life .

With her husband she made jewellery, and bags from cloth, she even knitted all of us warm hats and scarves, which she usually presented us with on Yule. Her husband was a Druid, and it was from him I learned a great deal of tree lore and the rituals of a Celtic past. My Steph figure was indeed a mother figure to all of us, even though she was only five years older than us, but even so her wisdom for her young years was honest, open, and deeply insightful. She gave me a lot of good advice at a time when I was lost, insecure, and looking for direction, and it was through her wisdom, which has stayed with me always, I think I found my way back into my love of plant lore and eventually writing.

I remember one Yule celebration and telling her how one person in my family life referred to me as the Scarecrow, and she smiled and asked how I felt about that. I was pretty scruffy at the time with my long tatty hair, faded Led Zeppelin tee, afghan coat, and patched pants, I told her it felt insulting and unjustified, and she simply smiled and asked, “are you ill at ease with the way you dress?” No I protested, I love how I dress, and her reply was simple, “Then embrace the Scarecrow, if you embrace it, then it will no longer feel unjust or an insult, I would say, it could be a compliment.” She gave a sly giggle and it made sense.

One particular member of my family expected our whole family to conform to her standards, I had refused to, and as a result of my teenage rebellion, I had embraced my free living side and joined the throng of growing hippies across the UK. She was appalled at it and refused to entertain me until I cut my shoulder length hair and changed my attire. Scarecrow was meant to be an insult, a means to shame me into conforming to her will, and so I embraced it and became more extreme, and whenever the insult was fired at me by herself or one of her pillar of society friends, I simply stood still and lifted my arms out in a Scarecrow pose. (I smile as write this)

It worked wonderfully, and soon the comments stopped. Embracing the Scarecrow took away my insecurity, and gave me the courage for the first time in my life to actually make a stand for who I was, and who I wanted to be. It felt like a life changing moment in my life at the time, and today as I look back, I can see how much of a difference it has made to the person I have become.

Every year on December 21st and 22nd, we all made our way to her house, and as the light of the day faded, all the lights in the house were extinguished, and we would gather around the hearth of the old open grate fire. She would say a small blessing and thank the world around us for the gifts of life, and the bounty of the wilds, and then she would lean forward and light the kindling stacked in the chimney grate. Once the fire began to burn, she would take a large cut log out of a basket, and place it on the fire to burn slowly over the coming days. Candles were lit from the burning fire and placed all around the house, bringing light to every room.

Once the fire was burning, and the house filled with light, her husband would carry in the tree of scots pine, one year we even had a holly bush in a huge pot, and we would all take part in the decoration of the tree. There were few baubles, and only a short string of electric lights, all the rest of the decorations were small neatly wrapped packages bearing the names of each of us, and special cookies that hung on red ribbons. Even now I still find it to be one of the most magical parts of my life, which is why many years back when I wrote the above passage for the fourth book, I wanted to save that very important moment of my life within its pages.

Drink mead and hail the Ancestors.

Yule was a time of friends and feasting, and all of us stayed together for the two days and laughed, talked and got quite drunk as I remember, I almost danced once such was the power of the home brew.

It is a memory filled with light, but also for myself edged with darkness, for I miss those wonderful people deeply at this time of year. Heirs to the Kingdom is more than just a story, it is the combination of a life, of love for people, and the adventures that are woven through all of my life of experience. I realise for most people it is simply a tale of adventure and fantasy, but I can assure you it is so much more than that, it is filled to the core with a life as real as your own, carefully written from hidden truth of a time long since gone, when people cared about each other and love had a true meaning between not just lovers, but true friends. The world has changed so much since that time, which is why it was so important for this memory to be kept alive in print.

On this day I gather my family around my own fire, and light a candle to light the darkness and pay tribute to my friends, and those other important special people I have lost from my life. Alone later I will sit and toast them, and then for a sad while I shall sit alone and remember them.

Whether you follow Yuletide or not, I send out my blessings and goodwill to all of you, may you walk on green paths with the trees above you, to keep you all safe from the storms of life next year and beyond.

Yuletide blessings to you all.

Point of faith.

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Every now and again I get a comment, usually from a Christian about how anti-Christian my writing is. I must admit I tend not to take up the argument with them, as from previous experience I have found that those who have what I see as a blind faith, and are not at all open to a grown up discussion about religion, and in most cases they have not read my books in their entirety and have only been alerted to certain passages, which is very frustrating for me at times.

If they would sit and actually listen, they would find that I am not against their religion at all, if anything I find the concept of their belief fascinating and would relish a good conversation, it’s just I want to talk openly with someone who for want of a better word, is not simply preaching off an indoctrinated mantra at me.  Most people do not take the time to listen to my observations of the Christian religion, and so therefore just sit and quote what feels like well-rehearsed lines of defence, as taught them through what I see as the institutions of doctrine. It is the one thing I dislike the most, as I am more interested in their own personal spiritual beliefs, not the same old flawed series of points and quotes as brandished by every member of the clergy.

I love the human race, nothing is more fascinating than what makes us all tick, and yes I have spent a life talking to find out more about what all of us feel inside and think about the planet we all share as home. I have a deeply spiritual side, and so at times its wonderful comparing notes, I suppose at the end of the day, we all want to know how alike or different we are to each other.  I love nothing better than to sit and read, and believe it or not, I have read the bible, possibly much more of it than those who preach their religion and choose to argue with me. It may also surprise a great deal of people to find I was raised in the faith and was quite involved in it from an early age. I am indeed an ex Altar Boy and Choir member, and believe it or not I served as a replacement Sunday School Teacher for a year in my early teenage years, so I have indeed experienced Christianity from both sides of the Altar rail.

I chose to seek another path, its a personal choice based on my observations, and I do not preach that everyone should take the same path, I never would because I feel very strongly we all have a journey of personal spiritual discovery to make, and no other should be able to influence it, but for the record I will share a little of my own personal insight. In my teenage years, which I found to be a time of strong emotional turbulence and questions, I asked my vicar for answers, and rather than sit and talk to me as another human being, I was treated like an inferior and lectured, and told to forget and ignore what was essentially a very natural process of development that I was going through, even if I didn’t realise that at the time.  As a result I began to search out my own answers, and the facts I discovered changed my thoughts and feelings about Christianity forever.  Later I discovered Paganism, although I am still uncomfortable with the word Pagan, which in my mind was a derogatory word used by the church, to address people who were seen as lesser because of their beliefs, and I coined the term Earth Faith to more accurately describe my beliefs at that time, although as with many terms used in the past, Pagan has become a term used and accepted by everyone today.

I looked at the facts of Christianity and found so many contradictions and acts of misuse that I felt it would not suit me as the person I had become, and that is still very much true of today. Do not get me wrong, I really do not have any problems with those who wish to follow the Christian path, there is much within the teachings that even today I still live by, the Christian ideal does provide a good blue print of how to be a better human being and live within this world, I just find a world that also serves and balances within nature is more suited to my spiritual belief system and works better for me.

I am writer, and it is the experience of writing and editing which in many ways when mixed with the facts helps me to gain a better understanding of how the words of Christianity were spread across the globe. Let’s face it the Bible has become the foundation stone of most of what we see as the civilised world, You could even say that it is the most powerful book ever written, but it is within that simple fact that my biggest doubts were formed. I suppose the natural researcher within me was not given the satisfaction it sought, and from looking at just pure facts, I very quickly came to the conclusion that many of the details of early Christian text came about through human error, and so therefore over the last 2000 years more and more errors have led to what has become the foundation of society, let me elaborate a little.

2000 years ago the only way to make a book was to sit and handwrite it all down, and then bind it together, which is how the very first gospels were created, many of those early copied handwritten gospels survive today in one form or another. My problem lies in the fact that the only way to copy those first gospels was to copy them by hand, and it is here in that small fact that my experiences of being a writer takes over. It is simple human behaviour that when copying a text by hand natural mistakes are made, something I know well from my own experience of writing. The brain runs slightly faster than the hand, and if you are reading and writing at the same time there is no doubt whatsoever mistakes will be made, its completely unavoidable, and if you doubt that then try spending a whole day sat copying a book down on to paper, you will find there will be more errors that you ever imagined.

So take the very first books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as written by those very disciples and copy them, and the result will be an original book with mistakes, because there would have been errors in the very first copies, so we have a copy containing the original mistakes and also new ones made the person who copies it. Add to that the fact that the original books were written in Aramaic, and had to be translated into as many languages as was required to spread the word of Christ, and suddenly your second generation copy gives birth to many wrongly translated copies, all of which will be copied to increase the amount of books that would be required to spread Christianity and enable it to grow as it has over the years.

I think it is safe to say that when the books were translated from Hebrew, they had already been copied countless times and so had become riddled with mistakes, and also translation is not an easy thing, a great deal of the time translating a book requires the one doing the translating to make adjustments so that the books become an interpretation of the Aramaic text, and again the books change and distort from that original copy of the gospel.

My concern grew from the fact that books were copied probably thousands of times by hand before we reached a time where printing was possible, and at that point when a modernising Church made the decision to print a new revised copy of the Bible, which I believe was somewhere around 1611, well over a thousand years had passed and the handwritten books they had were deeply flawed and not a very close resemblance to the original books. I find that alarming, because this one book has set the laws and rules of behaviour that modern society had been built upon, and yet this version also had to be approved by not only the church, but also the government of the day, it is a very flawed version of events that has deviated away from what was written in the originals.

It is fact that today there are countless thousands of handwritten copies of the New Testament held in museums, and places of study all over the world, and no two are the same, every one of them is completely different, which possess the question just which one exactly is the closest to the one’s written by the disciples? The oldest copy of the New Testament dates to about two hundred years after the death of Christ, and it is just a small fragment of paper containing a few dozen lines, and they do not match up that accurately with what we read today. I find that to be quite a disturbing fact considering how important the Bible has become as a moral and social compass to modern day society, and it is something I find difficult to accept.

That is just one of my own personal feelings about the bible, and it is not one I have ever asked any other to agree with, but when I add to that, the endless contradictions I found in the Bible, such as “an eye for an eye” compared to “Turn the other cheek” and love each other as you would yourself, one can only ask the question which one do I follow? The simple fact is that there are thousands of contradictions, which leads me to believe that it is so open to interpretation, that you can pretty much use any aspect of the Bible to make an argument to sustain any point of view you please, be it degrading women, burning witches or wiping out other religious faiths by pronouncing them as Satanic, even though Satan is a Christian creation who has nothing to do with other faiths. The one fact I do know to be true about man is that they will interpret things to bend to their own will and gain them the best of any situation, and sadly I do feel very strongly that is the truth of the institution we all refer to today as “The Christian Church.”

I am no fan of the church, the past is documented with the facts of how they have abused their power to control and hurt the masses, even in the modern world of today, and I have to confess I see them now in the same light as I would any other multinational corporation, and to be honest they have not provided any of us with actions to prove me wrong. All I see is the mantra of their god, used to increase their profits, gain land and exert more control over the people, which is why I am not interested in the spin of mindless Christian Mantra and would much more prefer a conversation about how a person feels personally about the faith they own as their own as an individual and how their belief helps them through life.

At the time of the life of Jesus, who I do believe was a real person alive at that time, there were also many people who acted as commenters on life around the world, and yet in all of the manuscripts (Which unlike the gospels, are the original handwritten texts that have survived) there is no mention at all of Jesus, the first real reference comes over two hundred years after his death. Maybe it is me, and yes this again is my own personal belief, but if Jesus was the man we have been led to believe, such as a man capable of working miracles, do you not think these people would have heard such tales of wonder and reported them at the time?

None of them did, which I feel possibly can be interpreted into the fact that Jesus was somewhat of a local hero, and it was those locals who held him in such high esteem that they chose to remember his life by writing about it. I find it hard to believe he was the son of a god who lives in some realm above us that science cannot detect, I do believe as the Dead Sea Scrolls infer that he was indeed the son of a Roman noble, who for want of a better words became a champion of the poor in his local vicinity. If the bible is correct he was a very well educated man for his time, and that would have gained him a huge amount of respect, I certainly feel he had great wisdom, and many of the things he taught at that time are still very relevant today, and yes all of us can benefit from his words, but as for being a deity, I am sorry, but I personally cannot accept that at all, but again for those who do believe I really have no issue with that.

I chose to walk a different path from Christianity many years ago, and it is one I feel is a more natural approach to every living thing on this planet, for I feel that to supress a natural feeling or urge as the Church instructed me to is an unnatural way of being. Through Pagan belief I found I could embrace and express myself as a person openly without judgement and live more in tune with who I am, and that for me made a huge difference to my life at a difficult time. We all have one life on the planet, and as we live we form our own natural affinity with what surrounds us, and through that we take a path of spirituality that serves us best, mine is Earth Faith, but that does not mean I am anti-Christian or any other religion for that matter, what it means is that I am aware of who I am as a person, and I acknowledge and accept the responsibility of all I feel and all I do. I am by no means perfect, my life has been a struggle like everyone else’s, and is littered with bad judgement and mistakes, but I have learned wisdom from all I have done, and when my time here comes to an end, I will have that wisdom in my final breath and it will ease my passing into something else.

The core ethics of Christianity offer everyone a sense of hope, and a path that embraces everything and everyone you meet, I think I can safely say as do all religions, and yet it is my observation that especially in the world at this time, we are placing too much emphasis on an individual’s spiritual beliefs, and it is being used as a weapon of division, one I feel is detrimental to the human race. I do not believe any religious views should be used to judge an individual or be used as a means of control. I do not believe that a religion should have the power to dictate government policy, or be applied on mass in schools. I feel very strongly that spiritual belief should be kept within the confines of the family home, and be chosen to fit the individual. There is too much hate and pain created by these so called religions of peace and love, and I do actually think that the leaders of each religion should be more accountable for the institutions they run and get their houses in better order, because the hate is preached at a higher level than the love these days.

So if you are one of those who has pointed the finger at my writing and sat in judgement of me because of it, please consider this. Believe what feels right for you as one unique person, and if that is Christianity then that is right for you, and I am happy you feel that way, but please do not make snap judgements about me because we do not serve the same god. Christianity limited my view of myself and the world, and so I searched for a path that I could identify with, and yes at times it does appear in my writing, its bound too because I write from the heart of who I am, and through my writing I try to share some of the wisdom that has helped me through life.

I feel my writing in Heirs to the Kingdom has shown all sides of the coin, at its heart it is a story of a Pagan Woodland peoples who have to fight to protect their way of life, against the survivors of a post apocalyptic Britain, who wish to resurrect the old modern ways of man. Yes I have shown some corruption within the Church of Christianity, but I also feel I have shown the kindness and love from the other side of the Church, pay more attention to Sister Mary and Father Warren, and you may find yourself surprised, especially in some of my views of tolerance towards each other. I write about my own country, which for the time being is a predominantly white Christian country, I dare say if I lived elsewhere, lets say the middle east, maybe my story would focus on Islam rather than Earth Faith, the simple truth is I write what I know, and I know Christianity and Paganism enough to be relatively accurate, I will admit as a writer I do have the liberty of fudging a few facts to aid the flow of the story, but saying that the religious belief is still only a tiny part of the story as a whole.

Finally I will state for the record, that my own personal belief is that all of us should believe in something, not necessarily the same something, but I feel we all have a spiritual side that should be nurtured as we would every other aspect of ourselves. If yours happens to be Christian or any of the other faiths, then more power to you. This world lacks a great deal of tolerance, as we have seen in recent times, we show a lack of wisdom and understanding in many aspects of life, such as sex, gender, sexuality, and religion, would it not be wonderful if we all embraced each other’s uniqueness, and tried a little harder to get along, maybe then we can all sit down and have wonderful and fulfilling conversations about life and all the many wonders that come with it and live more peacefully as one race with more harmony.