It’s nearly been two weeks since I pressed the reset button on my spiritual life. It has been an interesting journey so far. I am finding that a few old practices and ideas have come back to me and are building into a spirituality all my own.
Today is a New Moon. And I did something radical. Some people - my friend Cilla for one - would say it’s about time. This has been a long time coming.
I have basically pressed the reset button on my spiritual life. I’m starting again from scratch. I am taking a break from all of my favourite practices and making space to hear the guidance of Spirit more clearly. I am starting on a new journey and I have no idea where it will take me.
I have always struggled with time. There’s never enough of it to do all the things that I want to do. Again and again, I would set up elaborate schemes to help me do paid work, develop Deer Tracks, do my house work and gardening, do things for my various tribes and close relationships, and follow my own rambling spiritual journey. I was always on a quest for a system that would enable me to do it all.
About a week ago, I was going to post a tale of woe. I had it all written down, all you never wanted to know about how difficult my life is and how I am not who I want to be. And then I remembered a thought I had several weeks ago: I don’t do anything that I don’t actually want or choose to do. Most of the things I do in life are things I love. So it might be an idea to actively start loving them, instead of complaining about them.
Why do I do this? Why do I put myself through courses like Living Druidry? Why do I stick to daily practice and invest time in all this spiritual stuff? What’s the point?
All my life I have had this longing, this yearning to feel connected. When I was younger, I wanted to always feel my connection with God, to always have part of me open to him. As I grew older, and my concept of the Divine changed, that longing changed into a desire to be awake and aware, to be conscious of the life I am living with every breath. And that is why I do this. To feel the connection. To make love to this life, this aliveness in all things that is beautiful and precious to me. Every time I take a break from my life to feel that connection again, I work towards feeling it more acutely, and more consistently.
Mind you, feeling it consistently is not easy. Being very awake and feeling all those threads of connection with Spirit in all its forms can be overwhelming. I can’t yet do it for very long. So a few breaks in my life each day, just to re-connect, are necessary. Because this is what it is all about. Surely the point of life is to live it, as fully as we can.
A couple of months ago I had this thought: if Death came for me now, what would I like her to find me doing? The answer was simple, and powerful. I would like to be found making love to life. Perhaps under a tree, feeling its life force rising through me. Or perhaps enjoying a meal with my husband, savouring every bit. Or maybe dancing to the heartbeat of the earth. All of those would be great times to die.
If that is so, I had better make sure that my life is filled with such moments of intense connection. And that is why I do this. That is why I make love to life whenever I can.
First: Adventure with the Fox
Previous : Fox Challenges
Egg
When your skin is clean - as clean as you can get it - it is actually rawhide. It has a very papery texture, or can even feel like cardboard. Mrs Fox’s facial skin had gone absolutely solid. I was a bit worried about that, because it hadn’t dried in the most flattering shape. But eggs came to the rescue.
The recommended way of going about preserving a skin and making it supple is to use the actual animal’s brain. It’s called brain tanning. You mix the brain with warm water and work that into the skin. The protein does some kind of chemical magic to the skin and helps it become supple. We had buried Mrs Fox’s remains, so that wasn’t an option. The next best thing, apparently, is egg. I used the eggs I normally buy: free range and organic. I didn’t think Mrs Fox, who had been a free creature all her life, would have appreciated eggs from battery hens.
I took a few days to egg the skin. On the first day, New Year’s day 2007, I massaged egg into the face and paw skin by hand, using a wooden spoon only for the large areas on her neck and head. To my great satisfaction, I managed to get most of that supple again, by sheer hard work. I massaged and massaged her face and her cheeks until the skin moved again. Only the lip on her left side, the side where she was badly bruised, stayed solid. But I was very pleased with the result.
Then the next day I egged the main area of the skin. This time I used a wooden spoon the whole time to apply egg and work it into the skin by pushing and stroking. You have to keep working the skin until the egg has completely dried in. The egg yellowed the skin a little, but not as much as I expected. And it only took about three hours for the whole thing to dry, with two applications of egg.
On the third day, I decided to give her another egging on the skin of her back. Her chest and belly skin are very thin and supple, but the back area, all the way from neck to tail, is quite thick and tough. It still felt a bit papery, so I gave it another go. I don’t actually know if that did any good. What I do know is that I shouldn’t have used a wooden spatula to do it. I managed to create another little hole in the skin.
Smoke
Thursday was smoking day. Wood smoke, so I have learned, contains formaldahyde and creosote. If you hang your skin in the smoke of a fire, it will take up these chemicals. They preserve the skin and make it a little more water resistant.
Ideally, you need a smoke house. You can’t just hang your skin over a burning fire, because that would burn it. Anything that’s too hot for your fingers is too hot for the skin, Thomas from Trackways had told me. You need a really smoky fire - just add some damp wood - and then you have to find a way to direct the smoke away from it and onto your skin. You have to tie your skin into a cone shape, so it acts as a chimney and the smoke goes through it.
No description can do justice to the Heath Robinson device that Alex put together for this purpose. It involved the garage doors, some picture wire, a couple of wire coat hangers, and one of those flexible foil tubes that can concertina out. We hung the fox skin over the garage doors, with the tube leading from my fire bowl, via the coat hangers hanging from picture wire. And it worked a treat. If the smoke works to preserve skin, I will stay young forever, because I got my fair share of it. And the skin got thoroughly smoked, too. And the smoke really did yellow her.
Mrs Fox has done her fair share of smelling in the last month or so, but now we have given her a whole new kind of stink. She smells thoroughly smoky. I’d love to leave her outside to air for a while, but the weather is predictably wet these days and she’d just get soaked. The smoke might help make her more water resistant, but a serious wetting isn’t really advisable.
So that means Mrs Fox is finished. I want to give her fur a brushing out so she looks clean and sleek all over. And when she smells of smoke less strongly she can come and live here in my room with me. But other than that the job is done. Finished. I can’t quite get used to the idea. It’s been such a major part of my life for about five weeks, I can’t believe there isn’t anything else to do.
But I am proud of the result and very grateful to Mrs Fox for allowing me to work with her, to all my Druid friends who gave support and advice, to my friend who helped and supported me through the night of skinning, to Thomas for his expert directions, and above all to Alex, who is just amazing. Thank you so much.
These are the yuckiest times I had with Mrs Fox. So if you ever fancy skinning a fox, please consider the following.
Fox fat
This probably won’t apply if you’re dealing with roadkill in the countryside, but here in the London suburbs foxes are really well fed and have a healthy store of fat. Which gets a bit unpleasant when you are trying to get it off the skin.
Once you have skinned your fox, what you need to do is scrape any remaining tissue off the skin. The people advising me seemed to think that scraping while the skin is still wet is the thing to do. Thomas from Trackways advised me to get the membrane off that sits between the skin and the flesh. He said it ‘looks a bit shiny’. Well, easier said than done. When I was doing my wet scraping, everything looked shiny. The skin, the membrane (if I ever found it) and especially the liquid fat that was coming out of the skin as I scraped it.
In fact, touch is your best guide. It is easier to feel the difference in texture between bare skin and anything else. Sometimes you can see the edge of the tissue you are trying to remove. This is a good thing. With a very sharp knife, blade held at 90° to the skin, you can slowly, slowly, make that edge move. And when I say slowly, I mean slowly. And you are going to want a shower after.
While scraping, more of Mrs Fox’s story was uncovered, though. I was very touched to find her teats, two rows of three either side of the cut I made.
Fox smell
It soon became clear that Mrs Fox’s skin was not going to dry in the garage, so operations moved indoors. Alex made her this amazing frame. I’ll be eternally grateful for all the work he put in. He made a frame with struts in the corners so it wouldn’t bend out of shape. And he put notches at regular intervals all around the frame so that the string I was stretching the skin with wouldn’t slip. Also, the string fit neatly in the notches so all I had to do was pull them tight and they stuck: no tying necessary. I don’t know what I would have done without that frame.
So we brought the whole contraption indoors and found room for it in the hall. But we soon found out that drying fox smells. Bad. To put it bluntly, it smells of something going off. The worst part were her paws and her tail, where quite a lot of tissue just needed to dry out. I tried to speed up the process by using the hair dryer a couple of times. Still, it was a little hard to live with, and for a couple of days it only got worse. So when it got a little too much, and when we expected visitors that just wouldn’t understand, Mrs Fox moved into the loft: warmer and drier than the garage, we reckoned.
And it was, until the weather turned colder and condensation formed in the loft. One day, Mrs Fox came down wet. And I panicked. A lot of hairdryer work was done that day. Thankfully the damage was only superficial. She was drying out quite well. Including the large area of fat that I just hadn’t been able to get off while the skin was wet. I was a bit worried about dry scraping. I knew this was a known process, but my advisers had only mentioned it as an option for the last little bits. But I knew I couldn’t get that stuff off wet.
Right now, Mrs Fox is living in the room where I do all my work. This will tell you that the smell was a temporary thing that we just had to live through for a week or two…
Maggotty paws
One day, Mrs Fox came down from the loft drier than she had been, but with a family of wriggly little maggots between the toes of the paw that had had an infection. This was probably my low point. I don’t know what it is about maggots. I just don’t like them. Thomas from Trackways had said not to worry about them too much, because they would only eat the bits I wanted to get rid of anyway. So I cleaned them off.
The next morning, Mrs Fox had four maggoty paws. Lovely. I cleaned those off as well and had a good look at her toes. They were lovely and clean, so the little creatures had done their job. Thankfully, I never saw any more.
Dry fox fat
I am a complete convert to the process of dry scraping. It is so much easier. Mind you, the two days of wet scraping I did were probably useful and necessary. It would have been even harder - and no doubt smellier - to dry a thicker layer of fat and tissue. But once I attacked the dry tissue, it just came off. No argument.
It still took me several hours to get the remainder of the tissue off the skin. But it did come off, which wasn’t always the case when I was wet scraping. And now it was even easier to tell when I had reached the skin: it feels of suede. In fact, it is suede.
I was surprised how greasy a job it still was. The tissue I was taking of was definitely still very fatty. But I was making visible progress, and that is just very rewarding.
Next
In the next couple of days, Mrs Fox is going to go through the preservation process. I have the first few days of 2007 to do that in. This will involve eggs and elbow grease. And a contraption to smoke the skin. I am just so grateful to Alex who has agreed to sort that one out for me. I’ll let you know how it goes.
This article is not for the faint hearted, and vegetarians might want to opt out!
Meeting a fox.
On Tuesday morning I went outside with my rattles to dance with Spirit and do my daily practice. As I rattled and sang, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. This beautiful, large fox was looking at me, watching me, before trotting off and disappearing between the garage and the fence at the bottom of the garden. I felt honoured, but didn’t give it a second thought.
But an hour or so later, it was back. It was standing in the garden, very still. And a little later it was lying down under a conifer, in full view from my window. This is rather unusual behaviour for a fox. In fact, I thought it looked like it was about to keel over and die there and then. But through the obvious symptoms of illness, I saw how stunningly beautiful this fox was.
Alex and I deliberated what to do. I wanted to help the animal, but realised it didn’t make much sense to call the RSPCA and have it removed from its territory. Instead, I put some food out for Mr Fox, as I was calling it by then. I was sure it must be a male, because it was so large. I scared it when I put out the food, and I noticed it tried to jump the fence but couldn’t. Usually, foxes don’t see the garden fences as an obstacle: they negotiate them easily, like cats. But it looked like this fox had made its last jump.
I didn’t see it again that day. But the next morning I spotted it under the shrubs at the side of the garden. I walked to the park to do my practice, wanting to let it die in peace. I didn’t go into the garden again until Thursday morning. I poked the fox with a stick and found it was very much dead by then.
But I felt so honoured to have met it. Recently, I have been learning how to root deep into the earth, and I have discovered how much I am part of this land where I live. And so is the fox: very rooted and very much part of this patch of suburbia that was its territory. I felt a strong kinship with this fox, knowing that my roots and its roots had touched. That and the sheer beauty of the animal made me want to keep its skin. So Alex put it in the garage, dry and safe, and discovered that Mr Fox is a Mrs.
Skinning a fox.
But how do you go about skinning an animal? Long ago, I have seen my grandmother kill and skin a rabbit for the pot. The skinning was easy, literally like taking off its jacket. But this is a much larger animal, and I have never done anything like this. So I decided to call on a friend of mine who collects animal parts as part of her practice of Druidry.
I made a shamanic journey to the spirit of the fox and asked her if she was willing to let me have her skin. She said that I could have her skin but not her skull or bones, and that she wanted to be buried in her territory. I also asked how we should proceed, and if there was any work we could do for all foxes. During that journey, my spirit helpers did some work to help foxes everywhere live in peace.
My friend arrived at 6pm on Friday, straight after work. We decided that it was probably better to eat first, because stopping for a meal in the middle of the procedure didn’t seem right. Especially since we weren’t sure what Mrs Fox had died of, although another friend had suggested she might have been in a fight. By the time we had prepared the space in the garage, had our dinner, made all practical preparations and were grounded and ready, it was nearly 9pm.
We went to the garage, stated our intent, and called peace to the quarters. Then we made three circles: one around us, one around the sacred space in the garage, and one around the whole property so that we had some freedom of movement. As I rattled in the elements from the four directions, I saw the freedom of the fox running in the East, the passion of the fox fighting and hunting in the South, the harmony of the fox suckling her young in the West and the belonging of the fox in her den in the North. We called the spirit of the fox, and my spirit teacher, to help us and show us what to do.
Since I am making the commitment to work with the spirit of this fox, I did all the actual skinning. My friend was there support me and give any practical help I needed. And so we started.
The process was amazing. The body of the fox as we uncovered it from its fur was telling us stories of its life and death. The first thing that became obvious was that Mrs Fox was a very well fed urban fox. She had a good layer of fat under her skin. Next, we confirmed that she had indeed died of the consequences of a serious fight. Some of the internal bleeding was horrendous. This also made it difficult to do the skinning, because it wasn’t clear where the edge between flesh and skin was because of the coagulated blood. Some of her wounds had been infected too, and some of her muscles had discoloured because of that. With every wound I discovered, I appreciated her individuality more, and I felt closer to her.
I learned a lot about how bodies are put together, and how skin is attached to the rest of us. I learned where the edge is, and I learned to stay calm and grounded, even though the whole thing was taking a lot longer than I had hoped. But once we started, we had to keep going. It was clear to both of us that this process was meaningful, and that the story of this beautiful animal needed to continue. We were committed.
As I worked, I learned to listen to the fox, and let her show me what to do next. When things got difficult, I asked for her help and received it. For a first attempt at skinning an animal, I think I did a really good job. I am especially pleased that I managed to preserve the skin of her face, with ears, nose, and whiskers. She still looks really beautiful.
By the time I’d reached the nose, it was 1am. We then wrapped the remains of Mrs Fox in a sheet of calico with sprigs of rosemary. As we buried her in the garden, in a pit that Alex had dug earlier in the day, we prayed that all foxes may live and die in peace. We then returned to the garage and closed the ceremony. When we got inside, it was 2am. My friend and I both had a glass of celebratory wine and a thorough shower. We didn’t make it to bed until 3.
Cleaning a skin
Today, Saturday, I was on my own. We had a long lie-in and my friend left before midday. After lunch, I continued the process on my own, with a little help from Alex. I still kept the garage as sacred space. We stretched the skin by pinning it to a board, and I had to scrape the remaining flesh and fat off the skin. This isn’t exactly nice, especially the part with the fat. And I scraped for hours. We were all a bit lost as to what to do next, so my friend and I both called people who both said the same thing: scrape as much as you can off the skin now and then let it dry.
At first it looked relatively easy. But then I got some advice from a nice man called Thomas form Trackways, who told me I needed to get as much of the membrane off the skin as I could. And that wasn’t easy. I’m not sure if I ever even found the membrane. As soon as I’d removed a layer, I seemed to find another. And some of it just really doesn’t want to come off. But I have done the best I can. I’ve washed the skin with some detergent to cut through the remaining fat. Now I’ll just have to leave the element of air to dry it out for me.
In the process of skinning and scraping, I did make a few holes in the skin. In intend to repair the worst ones with dental floss (apparently that’s the recommended thing: waxed thread), because I fear they might get bigger when I work on the skin in the tanning process. This is going to involve eggs, a stretching frame, and a lot of man (or woman) hours. And smoke, too. I’ll let you know how it goes…
I have sustained a regular spiritual practice for many years now. Over time, my needs and aspirations for my morning and evening practice changed and sifted. As I grew and changed, so did my time of meditation. The whole cycle never stayed exactly the same for more than a few months. But a few things became important to me: my connection to the seven directions, a tarot card to inspire my meditation, and the silence of the Night Sky, who is my Goddess. Around those things, I built a long and complicated cycle of silence and prayer.
And then suddenly, sometime in February, I think, I started dancing. My morning practice shifted from a long written meditation to a seated prayer to this new thing: a morning dance. I take my shamanic rattles out into the garden and dance and chant whatever comes to me. I acknowledge the directions and the weather. I pray to Spirit. I dance out my feelings and my dreams. And it is the best thing I have ever done for myself.
The dance is a way to express myself through movement and sound that had been waiting to come in for some time. I have been told I should dance so many times in so many ways and never actually did it. Living in suburbia, there are a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t want to go outside and make noises and look silly. But eventually I just gave in to the need to do so. I needed to find a way to work with my stuff, whether that is emotional upheaval, anxiety, or the messages of my dreams. And this way really works for me.
The dialogue with Spirit became even more powerful when I integrated this dance with my evening practice. The main aim for my evening practice is to identify with the Night Sky and ‘just be’ in her eternal silent dance. But after that I ask for some guidance from the tarot or any other divination deck I happen to be working with. I ask it a question relating to my journey through the Year. Last Moon I asked it: what is the seed of my maturity? It gave me VIII Strength. So I meditated on strength for a while. And when I went to bed, I asked my dreams to show me my strength.
I dreamt of a wise Native American elder, in the present day, who served his people by sitting with them in their community centre and chatting with them. He was the picture of quiet strength, and the answer to my question. I then took him to my morning dance and asked him to teach me. He showed me how his strength came from staying connected to his powers that came from all directions. So I danced with mine.
My dreams are not always that obviously connected to the question I ask. And most of the time I don’t even remember my dreams. But then I can take the question to the dance, or just dance whatever comes up that morning. When I dance a difficulty, I allow it its expression and then ask my spirits to transform it. And they do.
This dialogue cycle is really powerful for me. It teaches and sustains me. It gives me an opportunity to work with the images that come out of my life and my dreams. It allows me to express emotions that I would otherwise push away, and then to transform and heal them. It is a beautiful thing.
I know you have many excuses why you can’t possibly do this. You can’t sing, you’re afraid of what the neighbours will think, you haven’t got the energy to dance, etc. Just do it anyway. It is so worth it. I can’t sing or dance to save my life, but the spirits seem to be happy with my offering. The neighbours don’t seem to mind, either. Because of this practice I feel connected to all things on the Web of Life, and filled with the power of the Universe. I don’t need any other reason.
It’s like no place on earth. And in a way it isn’t on earth. OBOD camps happen in that magical in-between-time and place-outside-place. A lot of magic happens there.
One reason why OBOD camp is not on earth is that it’s invisible. For 48 weeks in the year, there is just a field, with cows or sheep grazing in it. And then suddenly, for the other 4 weeks, it is a hive of activity, with up to 200 people at a time living their lives in this one field, in the knowledge of justice and the love of it.
It is acknowledged as a magical place by the people who go there. They pass in through the gate, a special place of transition held by a priest of amazing patience and integrity. He welcomes all who pass through the gate with a hug and a cup of tea, and a little time to leave the ‘real world’ behind. And when they leave, people go through the gate the other way.
This makes camp a protected place. I am safe there. Everyone’s uniqueness is honoured and encouraged. Everyone’s beauty is allowed to shine. And because of that protection, most of us soon find our strength. The great thing is that you are allowed to expand and take up all your natural space there, and nobody will tear you down. In my case, my natural space is hundreds of times bigger than the space I usually take up in the ‘real world’. But people understand this. And they also understand that most of us, however brightly we allow ourselves to shine in this magical community, most of us are still carrying around that small, vulnerable part of themselves that is so fragile. And that, too, is protected.
We learn a lot from each other. Workshops give us the opportunity to explore ways of working with spirit that are new to us, and increase our knowledge. But they also give us a chance to work closely with each other. This is what makes the week of camp into a spiritual journey, and it is amazing how a thread runs through it, from workshop to fireside conversation to shamanic work and back again.
OBOD camp was the place where I first learned the meaning of the words in the druid prayer: “and in knowledge the knowledge of justice”. The first time at camp I only went for a few days, not knowing what to expect. And for the first time in my life I found that I wanted to be with people. Even after three whole days, I still didn’t want to be on my own. I wanted to be sitting around the fire chatting with people. I wanted to be part of the community. And sitting around that fire, I saw how everyone was valued for their own sake. I saw how we were all connected, and how we were all connected to the land we were living on for that time. That web of connections and interdependencies is, to me, justice in its truest form. And I love being in that connection. In fact, I need to be in that connection all of the time, especially out here in the ‘real world’. It keeps me in my true shape and size.
Oh I know it isn’t all ideal. This year I saw more of the politics that I would like. We’re all human after all, and we have our conflicts. And none of us are that great at dealing with conflict, when it comes down to it. But still I felt held in that web of people, and in the web of connections with all things. On the last day, a little spider crawled up my arm and across my chest. I left it to its journey: I felt I had become part of the land, a patch of earth just like the land.
For a brief time, at OBOD camp, we see Spirit and goodness in each other. And for a brief time after we get back to this place which allegedly is the real world, we manage to see Spirit and goodness in all beings. I hope that this time I will be able to carry all of that with me, all the cuddles and the compliments and the validation. And remember one of the best compliments I have ever received: “You are a superbabe”.
For many years, and particularly this last year, I have been struggling against a tight feeling in the region of my heart. I always labelled it as fear, or anxiety. During my spiritual practice, I would try to make this feeling go away. I would breathe into it, or flood it with light, or do something to it to heal it. And it just wouldn’t go away. If anything, it got worse over time.
Lately, I have been trying a whole new tack. Instead of fighting the feeling, I began to listen to it. And as soon as I did so, it became clear that there was a lot of power in that feeling. It felt like there was another person in there, a being I didn’t know but felt curious about. I asked it: “Who are you? Please let me get to know you.”
Many images came: pearly light of many colours streaming out of my heart; myself dressed in lion skins, looking very regal; my dark twin, who is the night sky, and I am the stars. It became clear that fighting this other person was not at all the right thing to do. Trying to make her go away is like trying to make my own power leave me. If I cut my dark twin away, there will be only a shell of me left. She is my wild side, my powerful soul, the part that makes me whole. She comes as a picture of me with black skin, but also as the Beloved, the personification of what I long for, and as the Cailleach, the dark Goddess.
So now in my spiritual practice I still listen to this ache near my heart and I embrace it. And when I do, energy rushes through me, filling me with life. This dark twin, my wild side, naturally does what I have always longed for: she lives life to the full, with all her senses, without holding back. This Life is what I long for, it is life with the Beloved. It is life with/as the Goddess.
Trouble is, how do I live like that? I have known for years now that to live fully in my senses is something I need to learn to do. I long to live like that, I know it will open me up to so much more Life. But I never manage it longer than a few minutes at most. My natural state is to withdraw inside myself, keeping the doors well shut. Yet the spirits tell me that they thrive if they are heard and seen, if they are given love through people’s senses. And that is exactly what living on my wild side would be like.
When a question is sincere, and answer is always near. The Sword Queen taught me how to cut away thoughts that are unhelpful to me (I have many) and the Spear Queen showed me the path of dedication. Living in my senses is something I need to learn, like you learn to play an instrument. If you want to be really good at it, you need to practice, for many hours a day, until it becomes second nature.
I know what I have to do: if I embrace that power in my heart instead of fighting it, I am instantly filled with powerful love. And I am instantly more aware of my senses at the same time. Staying with that embrace is what I need to practice. It is like embracing the Beloved, and he will show me the way to my Divine Self.