Gordon MacLellan the Blend of all that is Britain
Many practitioners, as demonstrated by the Romany gypsy example above, strongly identify with a particular tradition as a spiritual path some claim to be Celtic shamans or practise Celtic shamanism, others adopt a Heathen cosmology and seek to recreate northern European magico-religious practices as they imagine them. By contrast, Gordon MacLellan focuses on being inspired by the dream of the land and celebration rather than any specific tradition such as that of a 'Celtic shaman' No. We have...
Differing Interpretations of the Past
Coming from a culture of discontinuity with the land, most practitioners have their own interpretation based on experiences of places and how they feel about them they develop a specific symbolic and mythological language as revealed through 'inner nature' a subject that I shall explore in more depth in Chapter 7 . Indeed, Alan Richardson, in his book Spirits of the Stones, claims that it is important not to treat mysterious sites as 'dull remnants of a dead culture' but as vital places within...
Plan of the Book
The following chapter gives an overview of the numerous spiritualities that make up nature religion it also points to some of the underlying historical influences of esotericism, romanticism and environmentalism that have currency in everyday contemporary practice. This is followed in Chapter 3 by a more detailed look at how some practitioners identify with and create relationships and connections with nature. Catching a glimpse through a New Age talk on Deep Ecology at 'Alternatives', a forum...
Healing and Magical Consciousness
In Magic, Witchcraft, and the Otherworld I argued that healing was central to notions of magical transformation. Behind the swirling and glittery mists of popular conceptions of magic and mystery is the notion that communication with otherworldly realities is a healing and balancing process the otherworld is a source of healing Greenwood, 2000 117 . During the process of a healing ritual conducted by the Romany shaman Jasper Lee and his partner Lizzie May-Gotts, who acted as his herbalist...
Spirits of Place Everyday Nature
It is not just such high-profile sites, such as Stonehenge and the Rollright Stones, or special places like Cae Mabon, that nature religion practitioners relate to sometimes more 'mundane' spirits of place are also sought, including those in the city see also Chapter 9 . Just behind the British Museum in London ten people from varying Pagan backgrounds were meditating to communicate with the spirit of place at Atlantis, the well-known occult bookshop. The group had met to hear Diana Paxson, a...
Transformation of Consciousness
There are many consciousness-changing techniques employed in nature religion -such as dancing, drumming, chanting, sex, and the use of psychotropic substances. It would take a study in itself to examine the multitude of varying ways employed to alter perception to experience participation. I have discussed this - as well as magic and the otherworld as a source of knowledge, and the witchcraft invocation of deities - elsewhere Greenwood, 2000 30-32, 95-102 . The importance of the shift in...
Gypsy Shamanism
The experience of the Core Shamanic seidr described in Chapter 3 made me reflect on the issue of ancestors in nature religion, and I had the opportunity to discuss this at length with the Romany gypsy Patrick 'Jasper' Lee. I first met Jasper, who is a gypsy shaman or chovihano the female version is a chovihuni , and Lizzie May-Gotts, his patrinyengri Romany herbalist assistant and 'liaison person' with the spirits , at an academic conference on shamanism at the University of Newcastle in 1998....
Magical Consciousness
So, a connection with nature concerns less a form of counter-cultural resistance - although this may be the case in more radical forms of Pagan protest - and more a development of magical consciousness. Using the term 'magical consciousness' creates a definition that is doubly ideologically loaded - both 'magic' and 'consciousness' are broad concepts that are notoriously difficult to define. Facing a similar dilemma over a definition of 'globalization', the historian A.G. Hopkins notes that...
Introduction
On one occasion at Beltane 1 May on Old Winchester Hill, an Iron Age hill fort on the South Downs in Southern England, a gathering of ten New Age practitioners attuned to the natural energies of the earth. Using a combination of chanting, walking, singing, dowsing, and dancing around a maypole, the aim was to bring healing and balance to each person as well as to the environment by the alignment of inner energies with the ley lines and chakras1 of the earth. Up and down the country assorted...
Identification with Nature
Attitudes to nature held by practitioners have been partly shaped by Romanticism. As noted in Chapter 2, the Romanticism movement drew on esoteric correspondences linking different aspects of nature - human, natural, celestial and supercelestial worlds - in a universal interdependence whereby all was connected through concealed forces forming a dynamic web. Appearing more as a mood or manner of feeling rather than a clear set of beliefs and ideas, the emphasis was on the individual, the...
Connection with Nature
Selena Fox, Wiccan high priestess and founder of Circle Sanctuary in the USA, expresses her relationship to nature in terms of kinship 'I am Pagan. I am a part of the whole of Nature. The Rocks, the Animals, the Plants, the Elements, and the Stars are my relatives . . . Planet Earth is my home. I am a part of this large family of Nature, not the master of it . . . Selena notes that her earliest experience as a Pagan, although she did not call it 'Paganism' then, happened when she was a young...
Radical Pagan Protest Protecting Nature
In the late 1980s the Pagan magazine Moonshine was instrumental in setting up the networking organization Paganlink, and published a booklet called Awakening the Dragon Practical Paganism, Political Ritual and Active Ecology in which a call was made to the Pagan community to act positively to end the wanton destruction of the earth. It contained a political ritual for people to gather together at the same time each month to 'raise the dragon', directing the magical imagery towards the sword...
Healing Nature
When I was conducting fieldwork in Norfolk and staying in a small north Norfolk town, I happened to walk into a shop that sold wooden furniture and New Age Pagan artefacts - such as green man plaques. I got talking to Julia, a woman in her early fifties who was sitting behind the counter she told me she was a healer and a born-again Christian and that she taught healing, relaxation classes and hypnotherapy although she avoids using that word after Paul Mckenna popularized it 'it puts people...
Being in Nature Freedom and Identity
Anne, the Pagan priestess and Druid quoted at the beginning of this chapter, is a member of the eclectic group Mad Shamans.4 The time she spent at Cae Mabon enabled her to get closer to nature she said it helped her to express who she really was. Sitting around a fire one evening in a reconstruction Bronze Age thatched roundhouse, the flames illuminating the dark interior, members of Mad Shamans chanted, drummed and danced this time we were singing a beautiful chant that Anne had composed, as...
Deep Ecology Interconnectedness of Nature
John Seed gave a talk at St James's church, a beautiful building designed by Sir Christopher Wren, in Piccadilly, London it was entitled 'Deep Ecology and the Timeline of Light'. A flyer pinned on to the church door read As environmental and social crisis intensify around us, how can we remain effective in our lives. Deep Ecology points to the web of life and describes our connectedness with All That Is. The timeline of Light describes the epic of our evolution and offers a new Creation myth...
Past Nature Encounters with Ancestors
Drumming groups, where participants can practise shamanic techniques, are a by-product of the growth and popularity of Michael Harner's Core Shamanism. I joined one such group formed through workshops conducted with Jonathan Horowitz who had initially trained with Michael Harner in London and attended regularly, once a month, for over a year. On one occasion in October 1998 the group conducted a seidr, a shamanic technique from the Nordic tradition. Seidr is a ritual practice whereby one...
Preface
The black of the night enveloped me as I lay alone in a shavan, an Iranian nomadic tent, by the side of a noisy rushing stream on a Snowdonian hillside of North Wales. My aim was to communicate with the spirits of the dark and elemental nature. The waters cascaded over the large stones in the stream and I let them enter my awareness of the place when the feelings offear had subsided a little. I had come back to Cae Mabon, a stunningly beautiful elemental centre on the edge 1 with an eclectic...