The Grove

In a meditatory mind
A dappled dolmen diem
Is formed where forest forms.

A glade bereft of shade
With flowers;
Digitalis towers
Flow o'er Bracken rills
And petal strewn hills.
Cynareae tribes
Inner vision imbibes
Helping the heart
Banishing boggart.
Golden light streams over brows
As green energy grows
Life affirming tranquility.

Filling brain, hurst and coombe,
With imaginary
Potentiality.

Gewessi Gothi

Thoughts upon what it is to be a Gewessi Gothi (with help from an Explorer)

Druidry - A Western Mystery School

As a Druid I consider myself an autonomous natural philosopher-mystic, aka a Gewessi Gothi, who discovers it all for himself. But at other times I am ritually proclaiming the power of (possibly imaginary) gods or spirits as a well indoctrinated pagan. I am flexible, and lazy, and sometimes it is handy to follow religious procedure or ritual, and sometimes it is not (and this is more a paradox than a contradiction).
Mysticism means that spiritual awareness comes from direct experience and not from what others (or books) tell you what to believe.
Wikipedia says this about it: "Mysticism can be distinguished from ordinary religious belief by its emphasis on the direct personal experience of unique states of consciousness, particularly those of a transcendentally blissful character"

Logos - A Natural Philosophy

Natural Philosopher means a person who regulates his or her life, actions, judgements, utterances, etc., by the light of their direct experience, learnt knowledge and reflections upon the world around them.
Wikipedia says this about it: "Major branches of natural philosophy include astronomy and cosmology, the study of nature on the grand scale; etiology, the study of (intrinsic and sometimes extrinsic) causes; the study of chance, probability and randomness; the study of elements; the study of the infinite and the unlimited (virtual or actual); the study of matter; mechanics, the study of translation of motion and change; the study of nature or the various sources of actions; the study of natural qualities; the study of physical quantities; the study of relations between physical entities; and the philosophy of space and time. (Adler, 1993)" Mortimer J Adler - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler

Heathenry - a Gothi

As a Gewessi I consider my relationship to the Gods, Alfs and Ancestors of this land to be a personal one. There is no need for anyone else to administer sacred rituals or rites to communicate with the Gods or spirits of this land. Each Gewessi is his or her own priest and therefore 'owns' their relationship with their deities or spiritual energies.
Additionally, as a parent & householder, in the modern world I'm a chieftain of this nuclear family. With the progress of individualism within our society an adult householder is responsible for their household's legal and financial contribution to society as a whole.
Within Heathenry, or the Norse/Germanic lore, a priest is a spiritual leader of his group, tribe or supporters. However, this approach of delegating spiritual responsibility has (in the past) shown to be flawed as it gives away an individuals spiritual power to a priest. That priest then 'owns' and has the sole power in relationship to a God or Goddess. This can be a source of great corruption; 'power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'. It is where the spirituality of the relationship with the divine energies moves into a human political world of social control. This is, in my opinion, the source of the corruption. The human conflict for social power.
In my personal approach no Gewessi should ever give away, to another, their relationship with the divine. You are your Gothi and your personal Gods, Goddesses and land spirits are your Guru's.
Wikipedia says this about it: "A goði or gothi (plural goðar) is the Old Norse term for a priest and chieftain. Gyðja signifies a priestess.... The goðar are depicted in the Sagas as the religious and political leaders of their district or goðorð. In Iceland, prior to Christianization, religious temples or hofs were privately owned and maintained by a hofgoði or temple priest."

The Gewessi are goðar.

Socks the Lap Ninja

who passed suddenly yesterday, she'd hidden her illness well so the vet said. Born in a chair in my wife's old flat, my wife has been both midwife and undertaker.
The Lap Ninja
We weren't expecting or ready for her leaving,
expecting her mother would be preceding.
Let the sky weep for Socks is dead.

She was a scatty lively bundle of bouncing energy;
our evening greeter
our lap ninja
our morning friend
now in turn we mourn our friend.

I prayed to my gods to take her home
her spirit to the Summer land
her body to the mother land
and the sky wept for Socks was dead.

Thor came rumbling over head
a double Rainbow flowing gold
took her spirit, one not bold,
then Frigga took her into bed
and holds her to her breast
in her eternal rest
and we all wept for Socks is dead.

Lughnasadh

This festival was in ancient times marked by rural fairs and athletic contests to celebrate the start of the harvest season. In respect of this, I left work early on a hot & humid afternoon and let the Awen take me. At first it took me out into St. Leonards forest and past the Hammerponds (or etang des forges as the French call them), which as ever, are remarkable in their beauty. From there I dropped to the source of the River Ouse. To the pagan mind springs and the sources of rivers are special liminal places where water is born from earth and meets the sky.
But the Awen took me past the source and onto the early reaches, back to my Bardic journey and a new awakening of the ancient Anderida (pron: an-Derida) forest; the Church Covert Woodland on your Doorstep project from the Woodland Trust.
A decade ago when the wood was but 5 years old I would sit there and meditate on the way back from work. It was a regular event, about weekly for the year that I lived in the High Weald. At 5 the wood was like my children at the time, small and low, more overgrown meadow than wood. There was some wildlife but it didn't feel like a wood, more an untended garden than a wild, natural space.
Upon my return at Lughnasadh what a change had overcome it. These trees were 15 years old and it feels like an adolescent wood now, butterflies congregate on the paths and firebreaks in the wood. There's a feeling of energy and wildness in the land, an anticipation that the Green Man has the upper hand and this human visitor is just another animal interloper. Spires of purple thistle congregate at the edges of the thickening trunks and the trees are recognisable as oak, ash, hawthorn and hazel. The space had an aural duopoly; to the east it was all human, mechanical from road engineering and the sound of the A23 road. To the west it was silent, peaceful with wind nestling through trees and the hum of insect activity. I supped upon these sounds in meditation of the fruition of this wooded space and then moved on.
Moving on I retraced my steps to the source of the Ouse; Slaugham (pron: Slaff'am) Pond and onto the thrill of the winter worn minor roads of the Sussex Weald that needs reactive nerves and bunny hops with fast twitches to keep my black racing hound of a bike, at high velocity, gyroscopic-ally upright. I came back aching and alive, with the drudgery of a dank basement corporate office left well behind.
Finally, I blotted to celebrate the festival with a chocolate milk shake and cleansed myself in the shower. All in all a sunny time as befits the festival.

Litha Journey :To the Sacred Ancient Land

Midsummer's morning started with an opening ritual to mark the high point of the year.  Then the nerves kicked in; a long ride always has its risks of failure through lack of preparation, accident or bad luck.  Mind you I've often felt that bad luck in these situations is the land Alf's, or trail gods, way of causing growth which can be spiritual, emotional or mental.
Preparation discovered that my big long day pack had rotted over the damp winter, after cursing an alternative to my 3 litre water bladder was implemented.  I'd use the 1.5 litre bladder and make use of the water points that occur regularly on the South Downs Way (SDW). 
I headed out  and my original plan was to sneak some footpaths to my childhood village and cross the Adur there.  Although the Summer growth has been late one look at the back footpath indicated that the land alf's would inflict much pain via stinging nettles and brambles so I stuck to the proper route.  This was gloriously vindicated once I crossed the Adur and two Goldfinches led the way procession like, by fence hopping either side, up the rise to King's Barn Lane.

Then to the white road and the top ridge of the SDW which led neatly to my first meditatory pause at Cissbury via the first off road adrenalin infusing speed descent and endorphin raising climb up the eastern side of the ancient hill fort.  The meditation brought forward the theme of this soul ride; the ancestor's relationship to the sacred landscape. 
As I stood and looked at the panorama of the landscape with their eyes I noticed the dip to the Northwest in the folds of the Downland, the area of Samhuin and realm of the ancestors.  It was also a direct line to my furthest sacred point of this ride.  A spiritually significant flush infused me and this energy drove North in the clear line of sight to their sky temple at Chanctonbury Ring.  From Cissbury, Albion's 2nd largest hill fort, the wide and still well used dirt track leads to the ancient Temple site.  For centuries now it has been a well known grove of trees providing a navigational reference point to the people of the mid-Sussex Weald just as the Temple must have done for our Bronze and Iron Age ancestors.

Upon reaching the Ring the mizzle threatened by the brooding slate clouds arrived.  Just as I was wondering if, as a friend who follows a more eclectic 'heeby-jeeby' path asserts, the energy here is foreboding or, as I feel, welcoming an ancient Beech presented herself to me.  This was a tree, one of the few who had survived the great storm of '87 now hollowed with rot and the gnawings of insects.  Just like Yggdrasil suffers the gnawing of the creatures around it.  Her hollow hid my trunk from the Southwesterly wind and cold damp air to sip some water, snack on trail treats and perform my second meditation.  The initial thought was upon time and how now, 25 years later, the holes in the glorious grove have almost healed with the growth of the saplings planted to replace the trees lost in that storm.  This led to how this Grove has been constantly in my sight for the 46 years I've lived and how she led me to understand the silliness of human racial perceptions; this old Besom wise tree held me and saw past genetics...
So she asked me about  the air that I'd breathed, the food that I had eaten and the water that I'd drunk.
Where are these things from she asked?  Sussex, mostly, I answered. 
So what are you made from she asked? Sussex, mostly, I answered.
How often does your human body replace it's cells?  Regularly I answered, over a period of years.
How many years have you been in Sussex she asked?
All my life, mostly.
So why do you worry that you're not from Sussex?   Because I was not born here and my parents and grandparents and their grandparents were not born here I replied.
But you are made of Sussex she answered firmly. 
Thank you I replied.  So there's the answer to any 'folkish' folk!  It's not race or creed or any of our human petty tribal differences that decide where you are from but the air, fluids and food that make you.
To the Gewessi this means eating and drinking local organic foods.  Our ancestors knew this and between the Romans and the Abrahamic religions our culture has forgotten but the Gods of our land have not.

Onwards and it was time to slip down the gap to the land of the Ancestors after the land of the Alfs at Cissbury and the land of the Gods at Chanctonbury.  Two more adrenalin fuelled descents with a dragging climb inbetween to Sullington Warren.  Upon reaching this bowl of Barrows I can understand that our ancestors were both spiritual and practical.  The sandy soil here is both easy to dig and would be better for preserving their dead plus I would prefer to be buried in dry comfortable loamy sand over the claggy, wet oppressive clay that is the rest of the Weald.  That this, and I'm moving into conjectural territory here, is Northwest of the primary social and defensive structure in the area would seem to have been fortuitously provided by the Gods to the ancient people.  Looking at the pictures the size and number of the Barrows suggest a lot of people over a number of years.  Excavation has indicated that pagan Saxons reused Iron Age barrows which suggests a continuity of belief between the Sussex 'Celts' and the Sussex 'Saxons'.
Views around the Warren at the Barrows :

The 22 mile return home left me able to contemplate and review the meditation. which led to further questions and future investigations around my conjecture.
Were Cissbury, Chanctonbury & Sullington the focal point of the Sussex people?
When could this have happened, just Bronze Age, just the Iron Age or as a continuum?
What other large barrow complexes are there in Sussex?
How far would those people want to travel to bury their dead?
What other temples are there and how do they relate to the landscape and thus the people?
Gewessi is a neo pagan path and this sacred Midsummer's ride has taught me there is still much to do to understand what Mediterranean and Levantine  cultural veneers have overwritten.
Those Finches were a very good omen of the Gold that is out in them there hills.

Meditation

Ancient monument;
The land elf firmament.
Rising coolly through Delling's doors
Into famed fortress of Sunna's daze;
Spirit land immanent.

Bretagne

Swift squadrons over
A green gently rolling land.
Home to Lancelot, Brocéliande,
My heart is all a quimper
At the rock of Fae.

Consideration of the Gewessi 9 Values

The Gewessi path has it's 9 values which is drawn from a mix of the Germanic and Celtic worldviews. Having read the Heathen Nine Noble Virtues in several formats the Gewessi discussion found it's emphasis is too individual and grim (Odinists please excuse the pun) - industriousness, self reliance, perseverance & discipline - without the flair and concern for truth that is in the Celtic writings. Industriousness and perseverance was viewed as an outcome of creativity and discipline whilst self reliance is integral to bravery & honour - all of the Heathen and Celtic texts suggest that it is inhospitable to become an unnecessary burden to others. The Gewessi path structurally reviews this, attempting to include our Celtic and Germanic heritage into an organised world view.

The foundation of Gewessi Truth:

Personal - Land - Be true to yourself

• 1. Bravery (courage) - seek excellence in all endeavours, be self reliant, evil acts can only hold sway whilst good people let it. Carpe Diem "Sieze the day." It is brave to be true to yourself and to believe in your dreams. When I was younger, and my body recovered better, the quote "if you don't crash you're not trying hard enough" was applicable to my biking and dinghy sailing. It's about the bravery to push the limits and to get better at what you are passionate about. "You won’t learn to swim on the kitchen floor."
• 2. Creativity - Every time you wish or want, you plant a seed, that seed is the source of growth. Overcoming problems requires creativity and an inquisitive mind to question the world around you and to make changes. "Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way." Edward de Bono
• 3. Discipline - Faith is the basis of discipline, nature is the basis of faith, Nature is a manifestation of Spirit. "He who lives without discipline dies without honour." This is more around self-discipline than the disciplining of others. The ability to overcome the monkey mind, good meditation and mindfulness comes from the disciplined and repetitive practice of the art. Eventually the disciplines of practice become positive life patterns.

External - Water - Be true to others

• 4. Honesty - Mean what you say. Say what you mean. Know yourself. "Honesty is the best policy." Of course being overtly honest can be just rude, but in this context the honesty is about understanding when holding back is the more compassionate option. In reality it's about presenting an honest face to the outside world so that others can trust your words and actions. That your words and actions are aligned, you do what you say you will do.
• 5. Honour - Have principles and hold them for your Gods, your Tribe and your Land. "It is more difficult to maintain honour than to become prosperous." On various forums I have seen people argue that the misuse of honour, things like so called 'honour killings' which are anything but honourable in truth, mean that this should never be associated with paganism. I disagree and believe that just because some misuse the concept does not mean that it's irrelevant. Honour is central to pagan thought "personal integrity; allegiance to moral principles" as the dictionary puts it.
• 6. Hospitality - Respect yourself, others and their rights. "When there is true hospitality, not many words are needed." In the laws of Hywel Dda it was not theft to steal food if a person had asked at 3 households and been refused food. It was the duty of every householder to show hospitality to a guest. This is demonstrated throughout Njall's Saga where often a sworn enemy has to be hosted and given the correct hospitality. It would be dishonourable to do otherwise.

Social - Sky - Be true to life

• 7. Justice - Seek always the path of 'right'; it's usually on the left - the path of most resistance. "Favour and gifts disturb justice." This is one of the trickiest concepts to work with. The Irish texts provide the greatest insight to the concept of justice in the Audacht Morainn The Fergus Kelly translation uses justice rather than truth - "Let him raise justice, it will raise him".
• 8. Knowledge - with knowledge comes responsibility. When you make a choice, you change the future. "A little knowledge is dangerous. Drink deep, or taste not the pure waters." I think this is key the Druidic philosophy, Draoicht, as described by Searles O'Dubhain is one where learning is constant. One does not just become a Druid, it takes long years of practice and research. The same is shown in the Icelandic saga with Egil Skallamgrimsson and the example of Snorri Sturlusson, poet farmer, historian, law-giver and warrior.
• 9. Loyalty - Never betray a trust. Trust that you'll not be betrayed. "The road to a friends house is never long." The rune Gebo is fundamental to loyalty the x shape is about the exchange of gifts, the handshake of truth and trust. Betrayal is the murky side of loyalty and who can trust such a person? Where is their truth and honour? It is one of the pillars behind the sacred bonds between people that form a group, tuatha or society as a whole.

Underneath this there are concepts, seen in both Celtic and Germanic cultures, about the law of the tribe, that the individual need counts less than that of the clan or tribe - this is the enclosure or Gard (which is where we get the word garden) that protects the individual from the chaos of the outside world.
These 9 steps are the path around this safe garden. If an individual steps outside the law there is no protection at all. In modern parlance they have lost their human rights, in old Anglo-Saxon they have become a wer-wulf, a human wolf, who could be killed without retribution. Theirs was a more brutal time and a modern Gewessi reviews the advances around justice and law which need to be taken into account. There is a Norse proverb "with laws shall man build land", meaning that law makes society thus members of society have to believe that the law will be upheld. Without that legal truth then society starts to crumble and the Fimbul Wolf will bring the long, cold winter to mankind.

Behind the veil

Part of the Druidic journey, whilst a magical one, seems to be about looking behind the illusory curtain of our society, understanding the glamour of our society. The media bombards us daily with tales of woe, the inhumanity of humanity to the world in addition to the chaff of mindless celebrity fluff. First, Second and Third world problems never seem to get better whilst all the time those at the top of society engage in frivolous lives of waste. Nature programmes seem to be either a snuff-fest of predators killing their prey or a lamentation of how the human super predator is destroying each and every ecosystem.
For a person following an earth based spirituality and attempting to live an ecosophical life it can lead to a complete disillusionment with all people and all societies. A depressive view of a futile future where it seems the planet is pre-destined for a man made extinction event.

Disillusion a freeing or a being freed from illusion or conviction; disenchantment. synonyms - disabuse, disenthrall, undeceive, disappoint.

It's interesting that most of the dictionary references are positive around being freed from illusion, abuse or slavery (as in enthrall) or deception. Becoming disillusioned with the glamour of a marketing and media driven society is almost a necessary step in spiritual evolution. My own process of disillusionment led to further illusions of despair for humanity and fears for the planet. It fuelled a crisis where all I wanted to do was walk away from modern life and live in a self sufficient hermit state.

The wiser influences in my life, i.e. my wife and the high mountains, brought a sense of perspective to the whole process...

Mother Erde / Earth / Natura / Gaia / Ardvi Sura I suspect is more than capable of looking after herself and will survive, whether humans will survive or not is part of her grand experiment. In many ways people are just following natural instincts to better their lives and breed the next generation in much the way that other animals have cycles of overpopulation. If we fail, and geologically humanity is still a mere ripple in evolutionary time, then she, Mother Earth, will just go back to the drawing board to evolve another sentient species. On the other hand we may overcome our dystopian pettiness, selfishness and all the other destructive behaviours to build some sort of environmentally friendly utopia in which humanity flourishes in harmony with nature. All of this is some unknown future.

Meanwhile, in the here and now, we need to maintain our positivity and avoid despair. We can be individuals who try to live ecosophically whilst still being part of mainstream society. Leading by example in a creative way to keep the best of this modern world whilst minimising our impact on our environment. If we show the way and influence just a few people to live in greater harmony with the land then a positive impact has been made. We become the stones in the pond whose spiritual ripples can help light the way towards a brighter future.