the raven

Would anyone like to hone their storytelling skills by doing a telling during National Story Telling Week in a Hackney library? Ideally, 2 or more of you could work this together. This would be a good oportunity to build a bit of a c.v. Email Anna at anna.robinson@hackney.gov.uk

On Sunday morning, I got up way too early, or at least that’s what it felt like. I was in a bad, bad mood, and felt like having a good old moan at whoever was going to be at Cilla’s workshop. I kind of started my moan when I got there. But I didn’t get time to finish my sentence, because it was obvious that we had a lot of work to do. Before I knew it, I was busy with material and many, many pins.

To make a Druid cloak, you get together with a group of friends at Cilla’s house. You take up the floor space in every room to spread out your material so that you can cut it. When I say every room, I mean every room including the kitchen. You then pin the paper pattern very carefully to the material. If you are a couple of millimetres out, Cilla will let you know.

Soon, the house will descend into organised chaos, as everybody works on cutting out, pinning together, pressing and sewing their cloaks at different speeds. In the end there is cutting out happening in the living room and kitchen, sewing in the studio, and pressing in the bedroom. And at all times, Cilla is ready to give clear and very patient advice.

Besides a Cilla to help you with the craft of cloak making, you also need a Greg to provide technical support. He is also useful for lugging extra sewing machines from the opposite side of London on public transport.

Throw in a lovely shared lunch provided by all participants, and you get a creative cauldron of activity. If you stir it long enough, beautiful hooded cloaks will come out in the end.

Sadly, we didn’t have long enough. For five people to make a cloak in a small house, you need more than one day. So I went home with most of a cloak but no lining as yet. When I left, other people were still busily sewing away. But the whole day, working on something beautiful together with my friends, lifted my mood and I went home smiling.

Thank you Cilla, you’re a star! And thank you Greg, Liz, Kiera, Mike and Steffi for making my day!

I just saw that Hilde asked me if I would consider putting up the poem I read at the poetry afternoon back in October so here it is. It came out of my experiences at the Druid Herbcraft Course last May. Though the word “magical” is somewhat overused in Druidic circles (I think) that week really was. Blessings.

Cae Mabon

And afterwards, back among polyglot crowds,
Swallowed daily in the Underground’s maw,
Treading the commercial canyons,
Rapt by the shimmering oil-streaked city,
I remember that hidden valley,
The path through the woods to Llyn Padarn
Where the distant sight of Yr Wyddfa
Drifted in and out of wind-blown cloud;
Where the tumultuous grace of water
Sang day and night
And the cuckoo’s two-noted call
Hung again and again in the air
Over slate angularities of slopes
Where the bluebells were dying into green seed
And foxgloves unclenched the fists of their buds.

She came down from her herb-hung tower
Walking into that valley with armfuls of flowers:
St.John’s Wort, plantain, comfrey, hawthorn,
Walking between the plants in the name of the Goddess
To teach us to heal and be healed.

After the hot tub
High among fir trees
Air caressing my skin,
Tall as an immortal
I stood at the dawn of the world.

Past Merlin’s Pool with its torn curtain of waterfall
We approached Dinas Emrys.
Climbing out of the mundane world
We came to the glade below the fort and –
I was the beech tree intertwined with the oak.
My leaves shook in the wind
As hooves thundered into this place of exile;
I was the Celtic warlord building his stronghold
There, where Vortigern’s tower had tumbled
And Merlin made his prophecies –
Young in the ways of magic; old in knowledge.
So we went down to a reed choked mere,
Sat there in enchanted silence
As branches of sessile oak, thick with moss
Soft as the pelt of a fox, discarded silver drops
Hoarded from a rain shower . They pattered through the leaves
And fell around us like intermittent blessings.
Sun flickered through foliage, over cobalt wild hyacinth
Haphazard in the grass,
Sunlight fractured through my lashes
And I was all the light that ever flooded over the hills
And filled the valleys.

The last afternoon – I had fallen,
Slipped on shining wet slate –
Shocked beyond thought
I leaned out over the restless lacework of the stream
Watching the white rush down to the lake.
And aeons below me, a slug, anchored on stone
Wavered over its own small torrent
That raced between two pebbles.

So, like us, she left the valley,
Long black hair floating on the wind.
She gave us buds and flowers and seeds
And remembers us still in her herb-hung tower.

Alas, most of us had to increase outr carbon footprint to get to Wanstead for the Imbolc ceremony run by Greg. As usual, he’d prepared with care and attention, and conducted us through the intricacies of the ceremony with good humour and grace as candles guttered in the breeze and the lighted incense spilt on the ground.

He led us to a pretty glade, hardly overlooked at all, although at one point two dalmations dashed into the clearing – only to be halted by the building power of an OBOD gathering and to bound back to their owner. The bluebells were already sprouting up under our feet and a few brave souls took their shoes and socks off. A pale sun gleamed through the trees throughout, as the Goddess came into the circle to bless each person there with sacred water. Andrew read one of his graceful poems and Hilde recited the genealogy of Brighid.

As is fitting for Imbolc the conversation beforehand talked of healing: how some of us had found strength and support in the group over the past year which had helped us to deal with difficulties in our lives. The Seedgroup is prospering at the moment, and each of us holds some of the responsibility for that in our hands and hearts. We are aware that we owe thanks to those members who did not let the light of the group go out during the last couple of years. As the ceremony ended and we gathered outside our circle, slightly loathe to blow out our candles, I for one felt a sense of optimism for the year ahead even though we all have the inevitable practicalities and difficulties to deal with in our everyday lives.

Then there was the pleasure of mead, home made rhubarb and ginger wine, Greg’s mum’s fruit cake and other delicacies before hitting the road back into the “real” world.