THE THREE KINDREDS

I have never lived in a world that was merely visible.

Growing up in a household with a deep Christian faith, I was taught the reality of angels and demons and an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God who created "all that is, seen and unseen" — a profession we made every time we recited the ancient Nicene Creed.

Besides a whole otherworld that was beyond the reach of the senses but still as real as anything I could see and touch, I sensed somehow that things themselves were not inert— trees, rocks, man-made objects all seemed to possess some sort of innate quality that I could only call "life." When I grew older and began to learn about other religions than the one with which I grew up, I encountered the idea of animism. I was struck in particular by the ways of Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, and its innumerable kami— spirits that inhabited objects, particularly beautiful or unusual natural objects. My understanding of the Nature Spirits has developed from these seeds, and when I began seeking for connection with the world in a Pagan context, I followed the call of the Gods of my ancestors and began to develop my knowledge of the world those Ancestors lived in — a world populated by these kindreds, just as mine is.

NATURE SPIRITS

The Spirits that inhabit the land and objects around us seem to come in various "sizes", if you will; the spirit of a mighty oak tree will be more powerful than that of an anthill but much less so than the spirit of a mountain, for instance. I sense that the spirits of small things — most man-made objects, the aforementioned anthill — are less conscious and intelligent than the spirits of bigger and more "special" things, and surmise that perhaps the Shinto recognition of kami as inhabiting particularly unusual or beautiful things may have been because the spirits of those things were more aware and intelligent than those of other things, rendering them more able to impact our world and to be recognized by humans.

There are also few cultures within the human family that have not had widespread belief in at least one race of "little people" who lived in nature. From among my ancestors come stories of the nisse or tomte, the "gnomes" of Scandinavia; kobolds, German housewights; and the bagwajiwinini, the "wild men" of the Ojibwe of the Great Lakes region. I believe these are also examples of nature spirits; perhaps in taking physical form in order to interact with our physical world, the spirits' manifestations took the path of least resistance and took diminutive human form. Perhaps these forms were just in the perceptions of the people who caught glimpses of these spirits and gave them a familiar form, or perhaps the spirits' physical forms and ours are similar because we are all children of the same Mother.

During my Dedicant work I have tried to become closer to the Spirits of Nature, primarily through making offerings to them, and through trying to sustain friendly contact with a few particular ones. There is a small stand of large trees I pass by most mornings on my way to work, and I have taken to greeting them when I pass by. I have also made offerings to any housewights that may inhabit our apartment, and am planning to start the house blessing of our new dwelling place with an offering and introduction to the spirits of that place.

GODS

As a young Christian, it was a bit of a shock when I really began to pay attention to the Bible and what it said about those "other gods": it never denied that they existed, like my Church did, but only said that YHWH's people were not to worship anyone but he; Ba'al and Asherah and the rest of those Mesopotamian Gods were as real as Jehovah himself, it said. When I rejected the vindictive God I'd been taught to worship, there was little reason not to seek out some of those others, and being interested in my heritage, it was to the Gods of the north that I first looked — Odin and Thor and the rest of the Aesir and Vanir. As I branched into more eclectic Paganism, I learned about a whole panoply of Gods great and small and, while I learned to view most of them as aspects of an underlying unity, I appreciated their variety and beauty.

I'm not sure what I believe about the nature of the Divine except that it's probably weirder than I can possibly imagine. Fortunately I no longer believe that I have to have the "right" idea about that nature, or else, so it's not nearly the concern it once was for me! ADF's assumption of "hard polytheism" is not always easy to wrap my head around, having spent most of my Pagan years as a pantheist, but I have come to appreciate the rationale behind it. After all, the beings crawling on the face of the Earth come in an amazing variety, a riot of vast diversity, and I see no reason that shouldn't apply to the Divine realm as well, if we accept as I do that the Divine is part of nature. Gods do seem to come in different sizes as much as the Spirits do; this is likewise to be expected given the principle of diversity. In the fictional realm, Terry Pratchett's book "Small Gods" made a lot of sense to me; like the Gods of the Discworld, the Gods of our world have niches great and small and while only a few of them rise to prominence, they all have a place in the multiverse that is our home.

The primary way in which I have sought to deepen my relationship with the Gods is in learning more about various Gods and Goddesses from myth and story, exploring different Indo-European pantheons and paying attention to any inklings of a call from a patron. I haven't found one yet, but I'm not rushing it!

ANCESTORS

Ancestor veneration is the part of ADF practice that has taken me the longest to assimilate. Obviously, the nature of the Dead is bound up with what one believes about the afterlife, and I've remained pretty agnostic on that question, although the idea of reincarnation does strike me as an extension the natural cycles in which we are an inextricable part. One idea I have heard put forward that appeals to me is that some individuals will, at least for a time, forego re-entering the Cauldron of the Mother and rebirth on Earth in order to act as protectors and guides for the still-living; it seems to me that this "opting out" of the cycle of rebirth would be more likely for those individuals who possess particular power in some aspect of their Self, be it extraordinary will or an especially deep capacity for compassion. Regardless of the exact way they live on — be it as a guiding spirit or in memory alone, their matter and energy having been returned to the source and recycled in the way of nature — remembering and honoring my sacred Dead in the Druidic fashion is still a worthwhile pursuit. To this end, I have been making regular offerings to them along with the other Kindreds, and have begun researching my biological ancestry to compile a list of names to remember at Samhain and to make the Ancestors a more real and present part of my spiritual path. Although my biological ancestors make up the majority of the Dead I honor, I also consider "ancestors of spirit" to be a part of that Kindred too: men and women who have inspired me and taught me things about life in this world. I am adding their names to my list and they too will be remembered at the turn of the year.

—

I don't think that our somewhat arbitrary categories of the Kindreds are necessarily walls separating them into exclusive groups; particularly virtuous or powerful Ancestral spirits share some qualities with Gods, especially heroes — in Greek myth many of the heroes are given demigod status, said to have been fathered by or birthed from the womb of one of the divinities. Some Gods seem to have much in common with Nature Spirits, if writ larger than average, and some Spirits seem to share elements of both the other Kindreds as well. Since we all spring from the same Mother and it is our mutual relationships that sustain the cosmos, this immense family takes center stage in Our Druidry and the way I view the Kindreds, and I look forward to deepening my understanding of and my relationship to these beings.

Return to the main menu