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Today's guest post is from a Tumakhunter who blogs over at My Journey and i've been reading his posts for a while... but what really intrigues me is that he's an actual honest-to-goodness druid. So when he offered up a guest post and asked what he should write about, i asked him a super huge question regarding his faith and how it all works... and he put together the super informative following response. Thanks Tumakhunter ((hugs))
Pagan was a word I knew, and I also knew Wiccan wasn't it (I had been approached by a schoolmate who wanted me to check out her Wiccan group, but it didn't *feel* right to me). It wasn't until I started dating a rocker chick three years my senior that I glommed on to the name Druid, though I had always kind of felt that pull. I think I avoided the term in highschool because I was/am a real D&D freak, too, and that game was in the middle of doing the talk show circuit/satanism thing. I didn't want people thinking I'd gotten *too* into the game, y'know?
One thing I try to do, is live my religion. And that’s what paganism / heathenism is to me – a religion. I once heard a man say, “Spirituality is something you do by yourself. Religion is something done with a community.” Wise words. I actually see myself as an incredibly religious man, and I twitch a bit when I hear people use the word to indicate, basically, fundamentalist Christian. But that’s just usage of terms, what can I say. I always want to ask them what they think Islam is, or Buddism? But I digress. Now to some history...
When I began with ADF in 2006, I decided to work with the Irish pantheon. To me it just made sense. And as I was a new father, I chose to work with the Dagda, in hopes that doing so might help me to be a good father. Brid also seemed a good choice, firstly as a hearth goddess, then later for her other aspects. I began making offerings every morning - for Brid, the first pour of coffee every morning, for Dagda, usually - but not always - a small amount of oatmeal.
Approximately half a year later, we moved into a new home with some friends of ours. We were to take the basement suite, and they the main floor, but at the time of the move there wasn't a suite in place. For the next few months, my offerings waned as I felt I had no personal space to perform them - even for the first little while after we got downstairs, I didn't make much space. After awhile, though, I really started to feel the lack, so made a very small space on the mantle of the fireplace. Eventually, over time, I have been able to create a larger, more permanent space.
Then in 2007, shortly after my first anniversary with ADF, something odd happened. It began with a dream sometime around the summer solstice. In this dream, I was having a conversation with a dark robed man. His face was completely shrouded by the hood of his robe, but I knew him to be a man prominent in ADF - I'm not sure if he told me that or not, though. In this conversation, we were discussing gods, and the topic of Patron Dieties came up. I don't remember much of the conversation, but I remember that part. I remember proudly telling him that my patron was the Dagda. He paused a moment and got very thoughtful, almost trance-like. Then he threw back his head and laughed, a loud, hearty laugh.
"The Dagda's not your patron," he told me. "Don't get me wrong, he likes you, but he's not your patron. Your patron is someone else, someone like Ma'at - a god of justice. But he's of a more... recent vintage, I suppose you could say."
When I awoke, I was confused. The Dagda isn't my patron? Someone of recent "vintage" is? And a god of justice, at that? Who? So I wracked my brains trying to think of recent gods of justice. I must have been thinking too recent, though, because the conclusion I came to was Superman. As much as I'm into comic books, and believe that superheroes are the new generation of gods, that still didn't feel quite right.
It wasn't until a month or two later that it came to me. I was at a birthday party for another friend of mine, and I gave him a staff as a birthday gift. However, this staff wasn't the best I could have done - it had been a part of a handfasting in a previous relationship. So I decided to do a better one. Looking around his home, I saw that he follows a Norse tradition, and that he uses the runes. So I decided to put runes on a staff for him. The staff itself would be a piece he gave me - a long piece of driftwood that I cut to six and a half feet long. So, I drew out the Elder Futhark on the staff in a descending spiral, and began to cut them into the wood. As I was cutting, I got a strange sensation, somewhat like a tickling voice in the back of my head. I knew it immediately to be Woden, and it said, "There you are. It's time to look over here, now, at the gods of your ancestors." These weren't the actual words - none were really spoken - but it was definitely the message.
Huh.
While I didn't get the impression that Woden claimed me for himself, per se, I was now given focus. My Ancestors. Well, I'm Anglo-Saxon in heritage, so that seemed the best place to start. On the internet at work, I googled Anglo Saxon Gods. This led me to a few sites on A-S heathenry, such as Englatheod, which I began to study. I learned a bit about the gods, and upon inquiry on the ADF Northern mailing lists, began to study Tiw (Tyr), as he seemed the most like me. I was never able to completely connect, though, oddly enough. I continued (and still continue) my studies, though.
On another occasion (back in March, I think), I had been doing some reading on the different gods of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and had read a bit about Seaxneat (also Saxnot), one of the chief gods of the Saxons. Little is known about him, though, other than that he is listed as the first in the line of Kings of Essex, and was in the Renunciation Oath that Charles made the Saxon peoples take before baptising them (the other two gods in that oath were Woden and Thunor, so Saxnot is obviously somebody pretty big). A lot of scholars consider him to be the same as Tyr. Well, on that day at work, I was doing some mindless task or another (pre-packing truss bolts, I think), and all of a sudden I'm transported to what at first seemed a battlefield, though there was only one person there: a man, about 5'10" with short black hair and well trimmed beard. He was dressed as a soldier from about 500 AD, and in his right hand was a bared sword. I *knew* him instantly to be Seaxneat (whose name translates to 'Sword Friend'), and he called himself by the title 'Kingmaker.' Now, since he obviously had both of his hands, he definitely wasn't Tyr, let me tell you. I went over to the Englatheod messageboards and asked about this. I was told that the Saxons only had kings in times of war, so perhaps he was a god of the Thing, or assembly, where kings might be chosen. I don't know.
Some time later, while on break at work, I was reading a bit more of my book ('Taking Up the Runes' by Diana Paxson), and was in the supplemental section of the rune Tir, or Tiwaz. The book told of the Irminsul, the pole erected by the Saxons at the centre of their communities that is said to represent the World Tree. It told of how in olden times a glove would be placed on the end of the pole, and the phrase "the glove is up" would signal the beginning of a fesitval (still used at Renaissance Faires today). Suddenly I had this image pop into my head of a man pushing up from the ground. His right hand pushed at the sky, seperating it from the Earth as he cried out with the effort. This man was the size of a mountain, was naked from the waist up (all I could see), and had short black hair and a short black beard. I at first thought it might be Seaxneat, and am still not entirely certain it wasn't, that I saw.
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