Rosc

I recently took a class called Introduction to Rosc Poetry through the Irish Pagan School. It’s taught by Irish poet, Geraldine Moorkens Byrne and it is highly informative and inspiring.

The rosc is an ancient poetry form, magical, often political, sometimes prophetic. The Morrigan’s Prophecies are examples as are Amergin’s famous invocations of Ireland.

Here’s my homework. As readers of this blog are likely to know I am an ally of the Protectors of the sacred mountain Maunakea and the efforts to keep it free of a proposed observatory project called TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope).

False Tower

 

A false tower not built

the TMT, 18 story observatory

–like at Dowth

in darkness remain

only a plan, a bad plan

a troubling dream

vapors vanish in morning breeze

 

mammoth mountain rising from depths of sea

Maunakea

umbilicus of heaven and earth

red cinder and snow

even in tropic latitude

towering rampart

silver sworded

glacier scarred

summit above this world

 

you rise

majestic giant

Your Protectors undeterred

a great host

anchored in truth and ritual

victorious under sun and southern cross

highest mountain defeats

the Thirty Meter Telescope.

—Bressal’s* tower the spell was broken

Here too, this tower, it is not built

the spell is broken, the desecrators driven

far away over the vast oceans.

 

*King Bressal was noted in Irish place lore as having attempted to build a tower to reach heaven in the vicinity of Dowth (which means Darkness) with the help of his sister’s spellwork, which made an unending day for the laborers. But the king raped his sister and the spell was broken and the tower not completed. See Anthony Murphy’s Mythical Ireland for insightful elaboration. This king and sister have been in the news lately with the discovery of incest in remains at the Brugh. Perhaps a distant folk memory.

Check out course offerings from the Irish Pagan School here:

https://irishpaganschool.com/courses

Fires of Justice

One of the things that I love about the Celtic traditions is the focus on justice, with deities from Brigid to Nuadha (just thinking of Irish) coming to mind. In different eras concepts on (in)justice will be different but in today’s world and certainly in the country whose passport I bear, justice is so much about race. Americans, especially white ones, have to understand how deeply racism lies in the DNA of the United States right back to how the country was shaped and structured from its beginning; this lives on in the force of those White Supremacist institutions today such as the Electoral College, the police whose origins were the slave patrols, etc. And let’s remember slavery still remains in the US prison system, literally. At this time for Celtic pagans of all varieties and stripes it is so important to say Black Lives Matter. And that people of all origins, ethnicities and races should be very welcome in our Celtic polytheist and Druidic worship. Hospitality is one of our primary virtues. I think we can all do well to think of ways to make our doings more hospitable.

 

However, If we’re honest we can see there are a lot of racists among Celtic pagans; in social media the slightest criticism can bring out the racists. Some even scream that politics need to be separated from religion/spirituality—as if that is a possibility. Often people like to point the fingers at the Heathens but it is very much around (and has long been) in Celtic milieus. One group recently got a lot of attention that was full on fascist (I will not mention the name). One common aggression is the asking POC why aren’t they going for their own ancestral traditions (the assumptions are great).

 

I lead small druid rites (in a practice that comes from an offshoot of ADF) on the fire festivals. The people who participate other than myself are POC. The gods do NOT care about ancestry, race or anything like that. It is humans who hold these abusive modern views. We need to be aware of the coding and dog whistles people use who may come to our groups, our gatherings, our virtual spaces. We need to ward against them. And for those of us who are white this means increasing our own awareness, an ongoing project*

 

 

 

May the compassion of Brigid and the cosmic fairness and measure of Nuadha come to our very troubled land. May the criminal injustice system be transformed into a justice system.

 

 

• For those interested in furthering their understanding of white racism here are a few books I’ve found helpful:
• Race Matters by Cornell West
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks

Towers: A Satire

These are times for satires. Here’s mine. Some of you might perceive an echo of a famous prophetic poem here, among other things. In Celtic lore, satires really do have venom.

 

Towers: A Satire

 

it rose obscenely pink

like a plucked turkey neck,

then it rose more,

slathered and viscous, not from

primeval slime but

from a polluted swamp.

 

it rose, its towers flung

upward into the heaven of circuitry

into money’s pure domain, where it was

sly at manipulating the currents.

forgetful of its place of emergence,

wiped clean of all traces of roots,

leaves, humus in a sterilizing chamber,

simultaneously calcified and virtualized it was.

 

it turned itself into sign

in the eddies of the monetary,

yet, its towers slipped having

lost their foundation, the muck and mire

from which they had emerged,

the fecund perennial glut and rut

of hordes of teeming soil, oblivious

it was to the seismic twisting of restless serpents,

slipping their fetters far beneath,

the lands and waters

growing ever more active.

rapturous with its penetration

of heaven, the phallic thing

now orange and lurid, smirked,

unaware of the scythed ones,

the raven-clawed ones, and

the red-mouthed ones rising in

fury, their cries echoed

by the shadows of the dead—shrieks

shivering the forgotten foundations

of the network of fruiting bodies

now turned putrid, purple flecked,

and blackening with rot.

 

the millennium tilted as

they threw down

sheets of blood, and

cursed with mists of confusion,

their cups of blood emptied.

the scythed ones

with a flick of wrists unseen

slice the lurid orange things.

 

falling back,

falling back

falling down

down down

 

the hitherto weightless circuits

drift down in ashy precipitate,

mad mangled metal work

and tarantellas of glass.

against the tower

a fortress wall of storm

strong as white steel glowers

over this spectacle.

the unleashed torrents lash

a bare fortress now,

crumbling, naked, defenses failing—

the high places that cannot endure

before the packs of wolves, the terrible storm birds,

the outlaws of the woods, the

reivers, the revenants, the enchanters.

 

a ghastly scene lit by

artillery of lightning reveals

corpses bobbing in the wash.

as floodtide washes away the wreck

a rainbow breaks and I see

an old lady with a basket of mushrooms grinning,

making her way through the salvage.

 

 

 

Gods & Radicals

As the US roils with turmoil, a rising tide of hate crimes and a promise from the Strongman the Electoral College put into office that the US will pull out of the Paris Accords, I take stock of my religious communities. This has been a divisive year in many ways, in so many layers. Many things have changed. One of the bright constellations in this depressing year has been the growth of Gods & Radicals, and its publications, including the magazine A Beautiful Resistance. A re-membering of the radical nature of being pagan in a capitalist-dominated world, something many had forgotten in the mainstreaming, especially in the US, of paganism/polytheism, is called forth. The roots of paganism have sent up new shoots. The ensuing year further revealed that publisher Rhyd Wildermuth’s exposes were real and of great import: that in our pagan/polytheist communities the alt-right had put their envenomed tentacles down. There was much hew and cry about how dare such accusations be made, but then we saw how many revealed themselves as White Supremacists, along with those who would give them passage and cheer, and who knew no integrity in their campaigns against those that they felt threatened by. A year ago, I thought the alt-right were but a tempest in a teapot. I was wrong: now a major voice of this new revised version of fascism has been given a top job in Drumpf’s White House, the head of the horrifying Breitbart alt-right ‘news’ website. A year or so ago I was told a Storm was coming; it has arrived, taken the capital and frightens the planet. An informative background on the alternative right: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alternative-right

 

G&R offers a wide variety of writers and perspectives (although its detractors claim otherwise) from Alley Valkyrie to Christopher Scott Thompson, the Hunter S. Thompson-esque hell-raising of Dr. Bones to the beautiful poetry of Lorna Smithers, the eco-wisdom of Sean Donahue, the spirited politics of T. Thorn Coyle, Yvonne Aburrow, Wildermuth and so many more compassionate, intelligent voices. Such voices are needed more than ever in these times of descent into neo-fascism. Please contribute to their fundraiser! It runs till the end of the year.

https://godsandradicals.org/solidarity/

There are plenty of cool perks too!