Spiritual Ponderings; particularly my accepting the spirituality of my work and my affinity with Merlin and the Green Man as the Wild Man of the Woods.

Spiritual Ponderings; particularly my accepting the spirituality of my work and my affinity with Merlin and the Green Man as the Wild Man of the Woods.

Cornelian Bay, Scarborough.

I should be doing regular blogs, but never seem to get round to it, but when I do it is normally because I have been pondering on something, or somethings for some time and have finally got round to writing it down.

One of the main problems I have is avoiding long rambles (which this may turn into!), and keeping to the point, but I find that everything is so intertwined with so much else, it is difficult to keep to one aspect.

Much of my spiritual philosophy can be seen from my other blogs, but there are a few things that have been simmering in my mind and my heart for sometime now that I don't quite know how to express.

One of the main things I have been making myself face up to in recent months is that there is something special about my simple work, a kind of magic that brings spiritual comfort to so many people. I saw this happen again and again with my pottery work when I was making it, right from the start, but the sceptic agnostic in me was loathe to accept it, and in more recent years I have had so many customers tell me again and again about how special they find my jewellery work; the great spirituality of it. And that is from so so so many people from literally right around the World. Although it could be argued that most of these people have never met me (which may be an advantage?). But it is also very flattering to me that so many people who have never met me should want my work, and have only seen it as a bad photograph, but once they get a piece of my work they adore it. 

Not that everyone see the magic in it, my work isn't everyone's 'cup of tea', not everyone, in fact most people, wont be attracted to my rather primitive and some would say amateurish style. But like me, I am not into the over ornate (generally). Honesty is far more important than anything else. Be yourself, not necessarily who people want you to be. I try to plough my own furrow, but when you are relying upon selling your work to pay the bills you can find yourself steering towards what more people want. Part of me just wants to do only the very primitive, asexual work, as most of it tends to be, as it is connected to the spiritual rather than the physical World. Not that the physical isn't important, and perhaps the 'feel' of my work is more important than the 'look'? The physical is as an important part of finding balance as the spiritual, as is finding the balance of the elements, as in all things. 

Yes! I would like to do more of the primitive, although when I have I have had a lot of praise, but few have sold. And occasionally I will do jewellery that is a bit more 'girly', but only within my own limits, which some still find too masculine, but at the same time there are men who are happy to wear it (is that because it is too masculine? But then again I am a man!).

Over the last few years I have been trying to find a way of combing my metalclay work with the beach pebbles I have been collecting and polishing in a spiritual, elemental, and I must admit commercial sense. I have been enjoying collecting them while out in the elements on the beach, and get quite meditative, relishing in the solitude of many of the beaches I collect them from. And luckily, most beaches can be more or less empty most of the time. And in fact, I hate it when strangers want to communicate with me while I am collecting (I have similar problems when I play my Medieval bagpipes outside. I don't mind having friends with me, that have come with me, but hate strangers being around). But I let the beauty of the individual pebble guide me as to which ones to collect, and there are so so many beautiful, far from perfect, pebbles in the World (just like people). Some just sing out to you. Some say "Hello! Look at me!" But there is also the more commercial side that I have had to bring into it; there are far too many pebbles that I have collected that will never get polished, let alone made into any of the multitude of jewellery items I see at the moment of collecting them. So I don't even bother picking up many pebbles now, and most of those I do get discarded as I know I wont be able to economically do anything with them even if I do do anything. But the good intent is there.

At the end of the day I want to incorporate my life into my work. My own personal history, as well as that of my ancestors, and of the land I live in. I want to combine my experiences from my past, as an horticulturalist, plants man, landscape designer, and my work as an archaeologist, and landscape historian. This is why I refer to myself as a natural historian, a combination of the two main aspects of my life, nature and history, that have been with me throughout my life. And, over the last 15 years I have been lucky enough to find ways to express my interests, and myself, by combining these influences into artistic mediums that have allowed me to do so (although I have also been afraid to explore other mediums, which I should do!). It has also led me to being able to explore the spiritual and aesthetic much more than with the more the technical and physical.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/GreenManJewellery

Merlin in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)

However! This is just one of the major themes that has been playing on my mind of late. Various conversations and messages from people have got me looking in depth at my personal spirituality, and I can only touch the surface of this, as it is so so so deep and complex, but at the same time so simple.

Now the nagging agnostic in me still struggles to accept the spiritual 'happenings' that I have had over the last few years. Most of the time I can just say to myself that this is pure co-incidence, or serendipity, but sometimes some things happen in ways too often, even as rarities! (If that makes sense! LOL!). And even today I still don't really believe in gods in the sense of a divine person sitting on his cloud, or in her cave, or whatever, deciding the fate of men and women, and getting annoyed at people not believing in them, or worshipping them in the wrong way according to some heavily edited book or whatever. If they were that upset with anyone for 'blasphemy' they could do something about it themselves. They don't need religious fanatics to go to war with other people, for not opening their boiled eggs from the same end as them (a 'Gulliver's Travels' reference for those who don't know).  But the agnostic in me can accept many divinities as conceptual constructs to help primitive people understand the World around them. Also that there is a life spirit (the 'Force'?), that is within all living things. In fact in each and every cell! Every cell of every living being is desperately trying to survive as long as possible. To keep their individual spark of life going. But as a consequence the only way that those sparks can keep alive is by the death of others; either directly, or via the remains of former life. There are few living organisms that don't need the death of others in order to survive (perhaps some of the bacteria living around undersea thermal vents?). Of course, how you get sustenance from other living beings is a question of human ethics!

But what has confused be to a great extent, and what I have had to just accept as "Well it is", is my finally becoming aware of and my great affinity to 'my' version of the Green Man. I say finally, because I can look back through my life and see he was already there, only I just couldn't see him. I can easily accept him as concepts of the male spirit, resurrection, the Wild Man of the Woods, the oak tree, and the hermit in the woods, and perhaps many many other things. But like, I think, all divinities, male and female, they are either all the same, or part of all of the same thing. The ALL. The Universe? It is just that we all have different ways of accessing the divine. Each of us is different and should be able to explore and experiment how we access it. Each to their own, as long as you have good intent.

It may be that you find many others on a similar spiritual 'path', and, of course, one of the biggest factors effecting your mind set and approach to this will be down to the societies you were brought up in and/or live in. So not surprisingly I have been heavily influenced, for good or ill, by Judaeo-Christianity, but through my historical research I am familiar with Classical, Middle Eastern, Celtic and Germanic pantheons too, and to a lesser extent other World religions. In no way am I a Christian, but I am very aware that for the last 1,500 years most of my ancestors have been, and that is something that should not be ignored (I must do a blog about my 3rd Great Uncle John Cousins at some stage, he wrote a lovely piece about his spirituality in a Christian context nearly 100 years ago. (Ha! That will keep you all keen! LOL!)).

Anyway! After I became the Green Man Potter, it still took me a couple of years to recognise that he was actually there, 'with' me. (And my finally finding I was a pagan is covered in my other blog on the subject). But fairly early on after this, during my early years on social media, I became friends with someone who opened up another related affinity to me. She lent me a book that had been a big influence on her back in the 80s that was about Merlin and many of the pagan aspects seen within Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Life of Merlin'. I can't remember the book or the author right now. I am sure someone will tell me off!

Merlin reads his prophecies to King Vortigern in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophetiae Merlini (c. 1250-1270)

I had read Geoffrey's 'History of the Kings of Britain' back in the 80s as part of my keen interest in anything Arthurian at the time (after all most of my ancestors come from a few miles from Tintagel!). But at the time I had realised that most of the 'History' was fantasy, and/or was pinched from other works, although there were some bits of folklore that were original to this book. And at the time I found the chapter on Merlin's prophecies rather dull and was mainly about flattering his Norman audience. So when my friend introduced me to her 'special' book about another book ('the Life of Merlin'), I was a bit sceptical, and not expecting much from it. Also, I had read most of my Arthurian fact and fiction before I had done my degree in archaeology, so now I realised I would have to read the 'Life of Merlin' alongside this book about the paganism in it (written by a Neo-Pagan, of course). So I downloaded a copy of the main classic translation, which came with copious notes about where Geoffrey had lifted this bit and that bit from, allowing me to read it critically, but I also did so with an open mind (I hope).   And I found a great affinity with the Merlin presented in this book that was different from the one in the 'History'. This was a different Merlin, one I could believe in as some one that may have existed, and one close to 'my' Green Man. Very much the spiritual hermit/Wild Man of the woods, but also someone with passions, and not necessarily a good man, which made him much more real although magical at the same time. And I don't mean modern fantasy film magical. Much more someone with a great affinity to Nature and the plants and animals of the wild woods. Mind you there was an interesting incident I specifically remember where he had disappeared into the woods for years, and eventually his abandoned common law wife decided he must be dead, and accepted the love of another man. Under the system they lived in she could re-marry with his permission, which he granted on his return, while riding a stag, with a host of animals following him, but at the granting of her freedom to marry the other man, he ripped an antler off the stag, threw it at the other man and killed him! More-or-lees "Yes you are welcome to marry this dead man!". Not very nice! LOL!

I wont say any more really on this right now, as it was at least 9 years since I did this reading exercise, and I forget the details.

But I have had other affinities to a slightly different Merlin, probably through reading the old legends, as well as the films, and various novels. Co-incidentally, the reason why Merlin is so high in my mind at the moment, is that I am half-way through re-reading the four books of Mary Stuarts Merlin trilogy (4 books? well there was a sequel on Modred); and it has reminded me of how much I had 'liked' her version of Merlin; a very believable Merlin in an historical early post-Roman Britain, which I now, after doing an archaeology degree, can still believe in, while still being aware that they are novels.

Nimue reads from a book of spells while holding the infatuated Merlin trapped in The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones (1874)

But there are so many aspects of the romance of Merlin that I have a great affinity with. I have had a love of Pre-Raphaelite romance ever since my teens, due to a BBC series at the time in the 70s (and a visits to Kelmscott and Morris's wallpaper factory in Merton at about the same time), and a lust for beautiful women with lots of thick flowing hair (Oh where is my Lizzie Siddle or Jane Morris?). I have been so unlucky in love throughout my life (or is it because of my unreal romantic expectations?). I have never been married, and it seems less and less likely that I will ever be, and even less likely that I will have children. But then again, at my age, facing the rapid approach of 60 next year, after a lifetime of mostly being on my own, do I really want someone with me all the time, and the hassle of children? And is it because of this that my work has become the children I shall never have? Is that where the spirit in my work comes from? All the normal life I never had? All the love that I would have given to a wife and children?

And over the last 10 years, since becoming so much a part of the pagan scene, I have been waiting for my Nimue, my young student, who I will probably quite happily let beguile me.

SATIS!