The Old Gods
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
― William Blake
The Old Gods are dying.
I’ve been trying to write this for days now, but it’s no good. The words won’t come. I can’t hear them, they’re lost in the noise, that ever present din of society and civilisation. It all gets too much until you can’t make sense of anything, until you feel like you’re suffocating. Sometimes I can escape it, ignore it, but not today. It presses in on me, weighs me down and it’s not enough to take refuge in my garden, the last bastion of green in a sea of concrete and steel. But even that refuge isn’t safe. Nothing is safe from that New God, the one we call Progress. It is in the name of the New God that the authorities want to cut down my trees, mow away the undergrowth and install a ‘green space’, Newspeak for a manicured area, sanitised and safe. No longer wild. Tame.
I leave the house and my garden, knowing that soon I will have to return to this world of man. Of work and expectation. Of living in a box, separate from my true nature. But for a while at least, I will follow the advice of Nietzsche's old hermit and return to the forest. I will go to the animals. I will return to my Gods, the old Gods. The living Gods of tree and river, of mountain and heath.
We have surpassed our animal nature. We have become the new man, the overman. We have renounced our nature and now, as that very nature seeks to destroy the pest she helped spawn, we sit and we say ‘The Old Gods are dying’, all the while not realising, or perhaps ignoring that when they do, we will die too. We have moved away from nature. We have forgotten our place within it, and now, because of that, because of our devotion to the New Gods, the world tears itself apart, trying to rid itself of us.
But alas, I digress. I must escape, and so I leave behind the estate and the inhabitants of that forgotten place, and instead make my way to the woods. My woods. The woods where I go with my sisters, where rituals are held beneath the canopy of the trees in the dark of a winter's night, where my blood has fallen and mingled with the dirt. This place runs in my blood and now my blood runs through it too.
I pass through the industrial estate, that pulsating creature that belongs to the New Gods. It never stops, never sleeps, this behemoth of stainless steel and glass, but instead constantly produces and in turn must be constantly fed with the efforts of the overmen.
Hidden amongst the factories though is a gravel path, and it is this path I take now. Already I feel myself relaxing, feel the layers of conditioning peeling away until I can breathe again. The path ascends and it makes your calf muscles ache but before the pain worsens, the path levels off and opens out into a wide field. In the summer, the grass grows tall but for now it is low. Mugwort grows here in the summer months, ragwort and wild rose too, the bare skeletons of the latter reach up from the winter grass, the hips bright red like oxgenated blood. The scent of fox urine fills my nose as I enter into the dog foxes territory. It feels like I’ve come home.
I make my way into the woods, moving amongst the twisted, lichen and moss covered trunks of Hawthorn and Birch and Alder until I come to the place I call my own. Now I can sit and be, with no expectation or worry. I close my eyes and feel the woods about me, let its atmosphere surround me. Soon I forget that I am man. Instead I just am. Somewhere a wood pigeon calls out. Somewhere else another bird takes flight, the flap of the wings as it bursts through the treetops startling in the quiet of the woods. It is here where I feel most connected to the land, where I feel alive. The hum of the woods seeps into my bones, into my soul. Somewhere twigs crackle and leaves shake as hidden creatures go about their business. If you sit quietly enough, sometimes the muntjac deer will show themselves, but they are shy creatures and distrustful of man, and who can blame them? Have we not become the Gods of destruction?
But even as I sit here and commune with nature, the god that is real and wild, the one that is always there and always has been, the one that flows into me and becomes me, or perhaps I become it, I can feel the New Gods approach. Already to the North, houses encroach. At first it was just one estate and now another has sprung up right at the very edge of the woods, the people who live there smug. They have the prime location, right on the wood's edge but all the while not sparing a second thought as to what was there before. They don’t care. They worship at the altar of the New Gods. They’ve paid the price tag and now nothing else matters. To them Nature has become something that you look out at, that you visit, not something that we are linked to, that is inside of us all. And all the while the industrial estate is ever expanding. I find myself wondering how long this little patch of nature can survive and my heart weighs with a sadness that runs deep.
And now, like Zarathustra, it is time for me to go back, to descend once more to the world of the New Gods, but instead I do not go to preach to the masses, to the overman. It is too late for that, for they are now disciples of the New Gods and pay no heed or don’t understand. The time for talking is over. Now only action will suffice.
The Old Gods are not dead yet and nor am I. With the song of the Earth running through me, I will fight for the Old Gods, the Gods of earth and of nature and of land. I beseech you to join with me now. Remember your connection to the real world, the natural world. Baptise yourself in the forests and the lakes and the seas. Hear its voice in the birdsong and the wind.
It isn’t too late. The Old Gods aren’t dead yet.
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
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