Continued Discussion on Awen and the creation of your own prayers, rituals, and ceremonies

Hello all,

This thread will be a continuation of the discussion from the workshop help on the 7th of May, 2020. That discussion was about Awen and how to use the inspiration for the creation of prayers, rituals, and ceremonies.

Here is the original announcement.

In this workshop we will draw the connection of your wild craft druidry to your personal Awen. Going from the spark of Awen to cultivating its flow you will be able to draw from the butterfly floating on the currents of wind. This will be about self-discovery and self-realization and how to recognize your own Awen and channel it for the creation of works of devotion.

The workshop will also include the basic building blocks or rituals and ceremonies. How understanding these basics gives unlimited opportunity to open and create. We will also talk about the fundamental construction of prayers within the druid craft.

I would like to extend a person thank you to all of the attendees. The workshop was a great success and we all got to get together even if it was virtually. Here are some of my takeaways from the workshop. Feel free to add your own comments and insights to this thread.

  1. Awen is best captured when the mind is at rest or is settled.
  2. The most creative times for many members is the morning
  3. Try to keep something handy to record your bursts of Awen (note pad, phone, napkin, etc)
  4. Look to AODA’s Seven Core Principles to help ground your Awen within your druid craft
  5. When creating ceremonies and rituals use the AODA Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony at the beginning and end. Everything in the middle is where you put your own Awen inspired work.
  6. When you create you should create for yourself with your own inspired works and passions.
12 Likes

I took away a question about the need to channel Awen into some sort of activity or product. For me, when I experience the Awen it comes as a sense of ease, Flow, and a feeling that there is no resistance. I can approach any activity in this state and feel good about it. I often feel it when hiking in nature, but I feel it at other times as well.

For me, just experiencing and being present in this sense of Flow is enough; I don’t feel any need to capture it into a project or product, or to be “creative” in some way.

4 Likes

To me, the idea of capturing Awen stretches a bit more broadly than producing anything. A person can be inspired by the moment to sing or dance. It can appear during ritual or meditation or as you said, hiking. Any of these is channeling that experience of Awen and the experience of the channeling itself can be the reward. Thinking in religious terms, it could be found in an intense spiritual experience.

I remember standing on my deck some time last year and seeing a huge flock of birds flowing high over head in a blue sky as the sun shone down upon my face. It brought me to tears. That is a moment of Awen. There have certainly been other flocks on other days in that same blue sky, but that moment transcended the others for one reason or another. I will probably never forget it. The experience itself can be the expression and it doesn’t have to be something that can be shared with others.

Now, I could certainly write about that event, and others, as an expression of my Awen, but I think it’s important to remind myself that while things like that are great, the experience of Awen itself is the most valuable piece of that comes from inspiration.

4 Likes

I looked away for a day and a half to grade and missed another workshop. Is there a calendar that shows events across a month? I have been looking forward to joining and putting faces to names. Being an online teacher for 9 years has taught me that there is significant value added with a simple video meeting in real-time that really solidifies a remote learning community like this one.

I haven’t made it to one of our meetings yet, but I do encourage everyone who can to attend, it isn’t just about the topic, it is about your community. Learning isn’t truly complete until it is learned from other peoples perapectives

3 Likes

No Master Calendar as of yet. Still working out the kinks of having it display correctly. The announcements are on Facebook and on the forums. The next one will be on the 21st of May.

1 Like

There was a time when I was in a very bad place emotionally and I remember standing on the train platform early in the morning with nobody around. I looked over to the only working platform light and I saw a small field mouse next to the wall of the station. It was such a profound moment I still think I saw Shiva as a mouse.

7 Likes

I was in a similar place at the beginning of my druid path. I went on a walk in the forest and a crow let me down a path, first to a tree that had died and was covered in thorns but was bursting with new, green, flowering vines, then to a clearing surrounded by running water on all sides with a small fire ring in the center. It was the most powerful moment of my spiritual life at that point, and is the reason The MĂłrrĂ­gan is my patron. Prior to that, I was in a horrible mental place. It was causing me a lot of problems. I hated my job because of it. I was burned out and was generally withdrawn from life. Druidry saved me from that and helped me see purpose and connection in the world around me.

7 Likes

Thank you for continuing this discussion. I missed the meeting but I was very interested.

I had an interesting experience with my the Awen and my daughter yesterday morning. Actually, it was her Awen and my teaching her.

I asked her what she was drawing as we lounged in the shade with the birds.

She said “I don’t know.” I left her to it thinking she didn’t want to tell me. It is a rare privelige to see her artwork, especially now that she is 13. A Few seconds later she was drawing and absently told me that a dragonfly flew by right as she said she didn’t know, and she decided to learn to draw it’s wings.

I was in the middle of reading an article by @DanaD in the Touchstone that arrived the previous day. The article talks about bardic Awen. Sensing a potential sign and likely coincidence, I put down the article and explained to my daughter that is how Awen works, as I understand it. Nature shares inspiration.

I told her a story about stones. When I find a stone in the desert, I know when it is meant for me and when it is not. I have left beautiful specimens in the desert simply because I didn’t “feel right” taking it, other times, I have put stones back and felt a tugging for me to pick it back up. My daughter thought it was because I didn’t want to carry them and sometimes changed my mind.

When I cut a stone, I feel what it wants, I look inside from inside myself. I was demonstrating cutting a geode for one of my close friends a few months ago and as I made the cut, I suddenly felt like I needed to change the angle of the cut. Normally a Geode is cut through the center, I had a strong feeling I needed to slice a “window” on this particular stone. I restarted the cut and revealed a large cluster of crystals in the center of the geode. The blade had been aimed at it with the cut I abandoned and the new cut missed it so that some of the crystals extend beyond the cut in the air. It looks impossible, but I turned the stone to cut it so the blade never went very deep.

I felt it and can’t explain how or what it feels like. It is just a knowing when it happens. Ironically, I was sharing mugs of meade from Ireland that night I made that cut. It must have had a drop of the Meade of poetry in it.

When we allow the natural world work through us, I think we are channeling Awen. When we forget what we want and listen to what other spirits want, we flow in the system, and I think that is when the Awen flows through us.

The dragonfly was my daughter’s faerie spirit inspiring her to create an image of nature as an act of love. My daughter’s next words, after telling me what she was drawing, were “I love dragonflies and it flew right by like it wanted me to draw it”. It inspired her to create from love, which, I think, allowed the Awen to flow through her.

I gave her the article to read after telling a very condensed version of the Taliesin and the Awen and of Odin and the Meade of poetry. Later that day she asked if the Awen comes from a different place for everyone…I thought about the wisdom of the question and replied with a resolutely unsure “Yes?”

I am not everyone, but I bet every cultural history has a story of the flow of creativity and how humans came about creativity and innovation. The engineer who designs builds, and launches a rocket, took natural materials from the earth and created something new that solves a problem It is beautiful and awe-inspiring to many, and humans turn to to both good and bad.

The scientist channeled Awen to create something. The scientist just doesn’t know it’s the Awen, they might call it something mundane like an Aha! moment.

I never had the ability to explain how I knew how to cut a stone before I had the knowledge of Awen. Now, I can say it’s the Awen, and hope I can someday understand it fully enough to explain it

I believe the Awen is like water, it flows where it flows and it flows where it can, not where people might want it. It can be blocked without harming it, but it will eventually flow over, through, or around the blockage. We must work hard to change it’s flow and even then we must maintain the new pathways, because it will create its own and continue to flow where it flows.

I think it flows best for many in the morning because of the silence of the body and the freeing of the mind that occurs during sleep. The previous observation about the quieting of the mind leads me to this hypothesis.

I think we can maintain our canals for the Awen through meditation; and the rested mind is probably more open and less blocking. I know stress is a blockage for me, but meditating and playing music reduces that stress and allows me to work better and to be more creative in anything I do.

The observation that the Awen flows best on the morning for many others is very revealing for me. The wealth of knowledge being constructed by this community in relation to esoteric sciences is invaluable to the contemporary world. The work being done here at the intersection of esoteric and natural sciences is particularly valuable to the greater circle of humankind.
.

7 Likes

I have a lot of trauma based anxiety around certain arts. Drawing is one of them, so I decided I wouldn’t think about the drawing. I literally sit with a board on my lap, my sketch book, and whatever I feel the urge to work with. Sometimes it’s pencil and pen other’s it’s my coloured pencils.

I sit and stare at the paper, and let my mind drift. Sometimes I listen to music, other times I prefer silence, or to have the tv on. While my mind floats around I continue to stare at the page. Eventually I’ll pick up a pencil and start to draw. I don’t know what I’m drawing. I have no image in mind. It all starts with a line, and then another, and another. If I find I’m concentrating on it too much I’ll take a break. Walk around, answer messages, and then come back sit down, stare at the page and start again.

I’m often surprised at what comes from it. Sometimes it’s a clear image, but mostly they appear elemental almost. I found it facinating to discover that everyone I showed my drawings to had a different image, or impression of what it was. I eventually made a colouring book out of the drawings.

I didn’t have a name for the experience while drawing. I had dubbed it subconscious drawing. Now I understand that I’m experiencing the flow of Awen.

10 Likes

I enjoy looking at your drawings; they have a flowing character to them.

1 Like

Hi Lilwolf,

I love your drawing style and practice. Have you considered working in with some quality colored pencils. I was thinking that you could really have fun adding colow patterns to your line patterns. Regardless, your drawings are awesome as they are. One of my favorite exercise in art classes was the blind countour line drawing. You look at an something, like a tree, and draw it without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper. I adapted it last year and drew the mesquite tree in my yard at night in the dark…as dark as it gets in a city. It didn’t work well.

It is excellent for training the eye and hand to work together, but it rarely creates interesting pictures, often produces horrible scribbles, and sometimes horribly interesting scribbly pictures.

Yet, I always enjoy doing one and often get a laugh out of the result. Perhaps the awen has a sense of humor.

2 Likes

Those drawings ended up in a colouring book I made. I do work with colour more often than not.

This is one I made for a family member. The colour scheme fit her apartment

Because I don’t actually concentrate on my drawing it allows me to process other things. I’ll often sit and draw while wrestling with a topic or issue. When I’m done… sometimes the image reflects what I’m working through, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I do have more clarity than I did when I started.

I was actually not allowed to take art lessons of any kind growing up. Everything I do is self taught.

7 Likes

That’s so awesome. When I saw your pictures I thought of the complex coloring books that we take camping. I have a large group to neighbors who camp together and we started bringing them for the adults while the kids run around like crazy. The kids got older and now everybody colors when we go.

2 Likes

May I just say, Ceiteach, that is a lovely post. A lot of wisdom in it.

And Lilwolf, I love your drawings too–very clean and a nice sense of symmetry as well as motion.

3 Likes