Ye Olde Wandmaker's Journal

Or Wanderings of a Woodly Wizard

This is an occasional logbook of my pithy thoughts from the shop, the heartwood of the matter, random barking, and twigs of wit, sometimes branching into other matters on my mind as I'm plying the midnight tung oil. You can read it from the beginning, skim, or click the link below to fly to the most recent entry at the bottom of the scroll.

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Entry No. 1. 15 Holly 2001

Starting this online journal of my woodcarving work. I have just put together some photos for the website and hope to take still more as I finish more wands. I love the process of carving wands, from finding the branches to stripping their bark and shaping them, to carving the designs and finishing them. I am still perfecting my technique in carving and in setting stones. There are infinite possibilities and broad scope for creativity. This Autumn I will be running an adverteasement in Touchstone, the newsletter of OBOD. It will be interesting to see what kind of response I get from the bards, ovates and druids. Perhaps the most exciting part about the process of making wands is the final one: enchanting the wand and making it ready to accept the hand and the name of another wizard. The physical and aesthetic work of carving and finishing culminates at my altar with a quiet and intimate inspiration, breathing life and the Phoenix-fire into each completed wand.

(#2) 19 Holly 2001

This morning, as the acorns thumped and popped against the roof falling from the branches above, I received a lovely e-mail note from my own Druid tutor who truly saw into the deep spirit of the wands on display on this page. They spoke to her of their past, their elemental strengths and character, and several told her their names. These splendid meditations serve as superb examples for me of the kind of conversation I need to have when I consecrate and enchant my wands. They also are the kind of insight and naming and atunement that I want each wand to have with its new "master" (or "partner" seems a better term). The wizard needs to get to know the spirit of the wand as a personality with a past, likes and dislikes, quirks, and temperament. Currently I am carving a wand of cherry - one of my favorite woods because of its silky texture and the gorgeous coloring it takes on over time, as it is exposed to light. I will have to have a talk with it soon... I have such mixed feelings about carving wands for other wizards. It is a noble tradition, if Mr. Ollivander in the Harry Potter stories serves as an example! But still, I derive such joy from carving the wands, relating directly with the wood and midwifing the emergence of its spirit, that it seems that others should want to do that for themselves too. Of course, there's a small outlay in tools, vises, workspace, and some small skills too, no doubt. I hope that I can find homes for the wands I make, but I also dream of inspiring others to carve, maybe even teaching the art one day. Apprentices? That would make them the sorcerer's apprentice...

(#3) 8 Hazel 2001. Sun Leo: Moon Taurus.

I recently received payment in kind in the form of yew branches and am having a delightful time with these. Cantankerous and powerful, these branches definitely did not like being packed in a box and shipped all a-jumble just after having been trimmed from their tree. The branches included many short twig-ends projecting off the ends and I was immediately taken with their power. Some seemed like antlers, others like a starburst, and others like runes. Looking for rune-shapes in the branchings of twigs is something my friend Sharon pointed out to me and I shall have to pay more attention to this when trimming other branches. I've been wanting to do more with pine and spruce branches but have not solved the sap problem yet. They are so sticky with sap that I couldn't even strip the bark without my tools becoming hopelessly gummed up. Pine and spruce and other evergreens should be relatively easy to come by in Minnesota, except that those trees tend to hang onto their dead branches rather than drop them conveniently at your feet, so pruning will be required. I do find that the trees I prune are quite nonplussed and cooperative. Sometimes they feel compelled to swat me in the face just to make sure I know who is the superior being, but they are relieved to have a druid trimming dead branches rather than those chaps with chain saws that are running around South Minneapolis right now. So many Elms are coming down from the Dutch Elm disease! It breaks my heart and makes me think back to my childhood when the streets were canopied with the branches of huge old elms three feet in diameter. Now there are so few of these left, but they are such beautiful and wise trees. Elm is associated with the Ogham letter Ailim, which is the letter "A" and the first sound of "Awen."

Sarah has become my indespensible assistant in the wandworks now that we are actually sending out some orders. She is the boxmaker extraordinaire and we have been constructing boxes for the wands. Much more than mere "packaging" in the modern industrial sense, Sarah's boxes are each handmake works of art measured to match each wand. They are meant to be permanent homes for the wands when they are not in use, to protect them from disturbing vibrations. I do find, however, that my own wand rather likes being out in the air where it can see what is going on at all times! After receiving the refletions of several other druids on the tree-spirits, I have realized that the dryads in these wands are not only still spiritually linked to the living trees from which they came, but are very complex ancient immortal spirits. Trees live long lives if they are allowed to do so, but their spirits, like our own, are much much older still. They have had their own past lives and are very powerful and mysterious.

(#4) 18 Hazel 2001. Last day of Leo. Waxing Moon in Libra.

It is interesting how wand branches will call to me in passing. Last weekend, while at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, I was called over by a very old Elm who has often provided me shade and meditation. It is in a magical place, just behind the Scriptorium. This old grandmother called me over as I was passing and, sure enough, there was a branch at her feet just suitable for a wand. Yesterday, while walking Brownie in Waveland Triangle and communing with the oaks there, I discovered two branches, again quite suitable. I thank the trees for these gifts. It is a good example of how trees communicate and "know." I asked the old grandmother Elm how she knew I was there and she sort of laughed, saying that not only her branches, but also her roots tie her to the other trees and the air and earth. It is a way of knowing like their way of communicating, that does not seem to be based in a symbolic system or language, but rather in vibrations that can be sensed and translated by the human mind. Vibrations like music, perhaps... When I place my palm lightly against a tree I feel these vibrations and it opens a more direct path of communication which my mind translates into words, ideas, feelings. The translation is never simple, the feelings usually alien to me. Trees feel in a very different way, and they are not emotionally attached to their limbs as we poor four-limbed beasts are. They have wisdom enough to know that when the physical link has been severed, the limb is still part of the tree's own body and its spirit lives on even in what we call "deadwood." In fact deadwood is very alive: not the bark but the heartwood within, which is not so much "dead" as distilled to its quintessence. It no longer produces leaves and engages in respiration and assimilation the way a "living" branch does, but the dryad spirit is still powerfully "there." I suppose this explans why trees that appear completely dead and leafless are often the most spiritually evocative, silhouetted against the sky, branches bare, evoking Winter in Summer.

Another alien aspect of trees and their lives, one which is hard for a human to relate to, is their relationship with insects. Trees are regular insect cities, with ants climbing up and down their bark continually, and many other insects finding home, breeding grounds, and food within the leaves and bark of the trees. Birds, of course, feed on these insects, but they are only transitory visitors compared to the six and eight-legged creatures. As a modern American human being, I have rather an antipathy towards insects. We don't like them crawling on our bodies. For the trees this is no more odd than it is for us to have a cat or a dog curled up in our laps.

(#5) 7 Elder 2001. Sun in Sagittarius - Moon in Cancer.

Wandmaking and runic studies have been occupying my time. Recently I received in barter some Hazel and Rowan branches, two very magical and important wandmaking woods. I am very excited to be working with them and discovering their moods and properties. I added an article on Wizardry to my website, which can be accessed from the main Wands page, and another on Dryads and the qualities of the woods used in my wands. I hope to add to the woods listed there over time, but there are a number of woods that I either don't have access to or don't have the proper facilities to dry. Among the former is walnut and holly wood, two that I would particularly like to acquire. Among the latter are alder, pine, spruce, and fir, which require kiln drying in order to remove the excessive sticky sap. Pine dowels that are commercially prepared are, of course, readily available, but I have shied away from buying wood for wands. Gift wood seems more appropriate and I enjoy having direct contact with the trees from which the wood comes, or at least second hand contact through those clients who donate wood from their own trees.

This past month enjoyed another blue moon -- there was a full moon on the first of November and on the thirtieth. Here in Minnesota with snow on the ground, the light of the full moon is particularly dramatic when the clouds lift. As the moon wanes again, I am working on stripping bark from new branches and carving others, removing the wood to reveal the inner wand, as the Moon's orb decreases. When the moon is again full, later in December, I hope to be ready to consecrate and enchant another batch of wands. When I enchant them in a batch, it seems like a graduating class. This past month also so the momentous opening of the long-awaited Harry Potter movie, which I enjoyed enormously even though some of the scenes were obviously curtailed. I especially missed the classroom scenes. Ah, well. We can only hope they will put them back on the DVD. I was particularly interested to see the wands in the movie and the scene in Ollivander's wand shop. I enjoyed that scene very much and think I need to work on producing some plainer boxes like those in the film because the wand boxes we have been making, however beautiful, are extremely time-consuming to make and probably heavier than necessary. I found the wand designs interesting --basically turned designs rather than carved ones, rather plain, but elegant in some cases. The camera didn't really allow us a very good look! I was surprised and disappointed that any mention of the types of wood used was ommited from the scene at Ollivanders. Harry's wand is made of Holly and Voldemort's of Yew, very significant choices from a symbolic standpoint as Yew is associated with death, while Holly is associated mythically with the Young Holly king's defeat of the old Oak King at Midsummer. Hmmm...

(#6) Eldermoon (O.S.) in the House of Cordan. Moon in Sagittarius.

Tomorrow is the New Moon and I am preparing to enchant a whole batch of wands I've been carving. Updated the pix on the website but need to take some more pictures of the latest wands. I've been doing more with tapered points and I like that classic design. Also recently did my first owl receptor reservoir on a Linden wand. I'm very pleased with that and want to carve more animals and birds and fish. Received som splendid Hazel and Rowan wood in barter for two wands and have been curing it in preparation for carving. Several new clients have contacted me for custom wands too, which is always fun. I've also been experimenting with using my dad's old Dremel tool in addition to my chisels and trusty V-tool. The Dremel will facilitate doing more intricate Celtic interlace designs. Most exciting of all are new plans I've sketched to build a garage next to our house that will actually serve as a wood shop. I'm eager to expand the repertoire to include hand-carved altars.

(#7) Alder 2002. Odin's Day

I've been neglecting this little journal again. Not that I think anyone is reading it! Too busy carving wands. I just finished a wand of Holly that I modelled after Hermione's wand in the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Just went out with my friend Peter again last night to see the flick at a cheap theater for the third time. Such a lovely film. And I love that scene in Ollivander's Wand Shop. Serious box envy. And what is in those larger sized boxes, I wonder... The Holly wand (which was, of course, the wood of Harry's wand) is a fantastic wood. Almost white in its raw state it finished with oil to a smooth, pale creamy gold color. The grain is so fine that it can only be distinguished with close inspection, but is very lovely. Althought the Ollivanders wands of the movie are obviously turned, and appear to be done in two pieces, I did not turn mine on a lathe. Instead I labored lovelingly over it for many hours to shape it all by hand. And a find job it is too, if I say so myself. I intend to do some others of a similar design and will probably experiment in the near future with the lathe too. My perfectionism and love of symmetry makes the machine a terrible temptation. It would be lovely if i could get or build one of the old-fashioned treadle lathes like that one Prince Andrei's father was using in War and Peace. Still, for a machine, the lathe is not too noisey, and its sound is really quite pleasant -- the whirr of shavings coming off. Lord knows I could make wand much more quickly that way, with still a lot of love. I think I put in as many hours sanding and oiling and rubbing the Holly wand. I shall enchant this one at the new moon, which will be in Aries, with the Sun in Taurus. Quite a lot of new custom orders coming in at a nice pace. All my customers are such interesting people. I'll have to plan an anniversary party for Bard Woodcrafts, perhaps in five or seven years, or nine, and invite all my customers.

(#8) Summer Solstice 2002 - Sun in Vuin, Moon in Huathe.

Still looks like the new workshop is going to be put off, as we've incurred some unexpected and unwanted building projects here at Bardwood Lodge. However, I've been reorganizing my wee shop in the dungeons and continue to get regular orders coming in. Two days ago, I recieved a shipment of Yew stock from a supplier in British Columbia. Splendid stuff! Wonderful color and grain. These will make some fine wands and Yew, as the wood of the Ovate Grade, is near to my heart. It is a wood closely involved with prophecy, seeing, the borders of death and life, and the Ancestors. Now if I could just track down some more Holly -- it seems to be quite popular and is such a lovely wood. I'd also like to acquire some Beech and Alder and perhaps mahogany. Lately I've been carving Redwood, which is a very lightweight wood. All my pieces are milled stock, rather than branches so the grain is very coarse, but also very beautiful. I'm experimenting with ways to carve designs into woods like Redwood, which tear and split at the grain so easily.

(#9) July 4th, 2002 - Sun in Vuin, Moon in Ruis.

I've been carving away like a beaver lately, but have still managed to update the "Magical Properties of Woods" page and the FAQ. Next thing I would like to add is a page on the mystical properties of the various stones and crystals we use in some of our wands. I've been working on a wand with intricate Celtic interlace, which looks very fine: Hawthorn and phoenix feather. Celtic interlace is a beautiful art form but tricky to carry off in the round. Nor do I have the patience to make it symmetrically precise the way the old Irish monks used to do.

And interlace, which symbolizes the interweaving of all things is reflective of my thoughts today. I am pondering political symbolism today on the 4th of July. The local parade was full of politicians and the GOP had a huge elephant on their float, which caused me to think. The symbol of the anti-environmentalist party is an endangered species from Africa (at least it looks like an African elephant, not an Indian one). There is a sad irony there. To the GOP it apparently symbolizes only bigness, the "grand" in Grand Old Party. As a druid it is very disturbing to see such an anti-environmentalist administration frantically trying to mine, drill, and log as much of the country as they can before someone wises up and votes them out of office. This administration was not elected by a majority of citizens - indeed not even a majority of the people who voted - and yet it has proceded to undo a lifetime worth of work by conservationists who have tried to make corporate moghuls act responsibly, and, indeed, "conservatively" in the real sense of that word. I don't know what the GOP "conservatives" are trying to conserve other than an Old Testament kind of patriarchal Christian hegemony and the rejection of any other views. I am digressing from wandmaking perhaps, but it all ties together for me. I am oppressed by a regime that does not represent my spiritual values or my ethical values. The party that has made "values" their own personal monopoly, really has very bad values from my point of view.

At the same time that this larger exploitative regime marches on like Juggernaut, closer to home in South Minneapolis the city officials are on another aggressive campaign against Dutch Elm disease. We humans transported the Dutch Elm beetles, first to England from Holland, then to North America. We, in our frenetic world travelling, also transported the fungus from Asia that has almost killed off the American Chestnut. This year too, the city has been spraying for gypsy moths, a terrible plague,once again resulting from humans travelling all over the world. Now is that traveling urge bad? No, I can't say it is; and yet, here are the terrible consequences. So many old Elms are marked for destruction this summer - nearly a dozen around and in Linden Hills Park where we go to play. It is hard for me to endure watching the workers cut up these majestic old trees, and it is not usually possible for me to be there at the right time to ask for wand wood from the elms. One prefers a wand taken from a healthy tree that will continue to live, but looked at another way, a wand rescued from a tree being obliterated in the chopper does presere one tiny bit of that tree's spirit, a memory of its majesty.

And, all this sadness is exacerbated at the moment by the fact that we are going to be forced to cut down two trees in our own sacred grove so that workers can get access to our retainng walls and rebuild them. We tried to do it without removing trees, but, alas it is no longer possible. I won't relate the whole sad story here, but I am bracing myself for the task of taking down those trees. The young flowering crab apple ("Thunderchild") can be used for wands, and even a staff. The birch, which is ailing from bronze birch borers might provide some useable wood yet, but I'm afraid it is too wormy. I will keep it all for burning in ritual fires. These things are sad, but we must face death and even pointless destruction as part of the world. Where we cannot prevent such sadness, we should, as ethical beings, work to solve the problems that we, as a species, have caused. Dutch Elm disease needs to be cured, just as we must find a cure for AIDS and other human diseases. And yet, old fashioned techno-science is not enough. We must make sure we understand the ecological ramifications of our actions, so that we don't just make things worse. We spray for gypsy moths and kill off most of the butterfly population with them. I feel the tragedy of these deaths just as much as I feel the tragedy of human deaths in war, accident, foolishness, or bombings. Why do humans cause so much death and destruction? Why do so many humans just ignore that fact? Are other species of animal so reckless? Is one purpose of human incarnation to live out recklessness, as it is to also live out vision and creative imagination? Is there a reason why one exists alongside the other? Something in the very nature of human imagination, perhaps? It allows us free range to imagine what is not there before our eyes, and so also allows us to ignore what is before our eyes and pretend it is not so.

And querants still ask me, "Are your magick wands real?" Let those with eyes see. Let those with imagination imagine.

(#10) 1 Muin 6002 C.E. (October 23, 2002 A.D.)

Sigh. I've been so busy with custom orders that I have not written in this journal for months. Must catch up. The garden construction is finished, for the most part, and we are preparing to plant our new little trees. They will be babies, of course, young trees, but I hope that under our care they will quickly grow and shade our sacred circle. I've expanded my woodcaving into some lovely new woods - purpleheart and ebony, which are truly spectacular, and have just received a splendid shipment of hazel sticks that I am eager to get started on. Lately the popular woods seem to been black walnut and holly. I am getting a little impatient with young Harry Potter fans who think that I should provide them with spells and training in wizarding. Some day, perhaps I'll start a wizarding school, but not at present. Haven't the time! At the moment I've gone back to school myself, taking a course to get my certification as a Master Herbalist. Very excited about that. A good thing to do in the Minnesota winter: experiment with herbal infusions and cold remedies! The time of Scorpio begins, which is Vine and Sea in the Elvish tree ogham. Samhuinn will be upon us in a week's time and at Bardwood Lodge we are busily carving jack-o-lanterns and cooking squash soup.

(#11) 8 Narvinye : Rowan 6002 C.E. (28 December 2002 A.D.)

This is my Winter Solstice Entry, a bit late. The holidays have been upon us but now, with the exception of the secular New Year, are past. It's a bit more than I can take. It seems to me that we should celebrate the Solstice and have done with it. Christmas is the Christian honoring of the Sun's rebirth and ought to occur on the Solstice (December 25th was the Solstice when that date was originally chosen by the cult of Mithras, and later adopted by the Cult of Christus). Wand orders are still a bit backlogged, but I expect to remedy that before the next new Moon, which comes next Thursday. I had to make a venture out for Willow yesterday with my assistant Linnea because I ran out of Willow branches and needed a longish one for a custom order. Willow is a lovely mooney wood, but hard to carve and very soft, so not very durable. Not the best choice for a wand from a practical point of view. I've decided I like staining Willow half light and half dark as symbolic of the dark and light aspects of Omulan Rianna. I have been doing a lot of Elvish research and have begun to inscribe the Elvish (Eranor) names of the Old Ones. Seeing "Two Towers" in the theater prompted me to review my Tengwar and ponder the differences between it at the Eranor artorin writing, which is very similar but assigns letters differently and uses some different shapes. The rianar runes are the writing I employ most often in wand inscriptions, but in some woods that are hard enough, the artorin or tengwar might be used. I received a pipe-carving kit from my brother as a Yuletide present and carved it at once. In a day I had produced a lovely, heavy briar and inscribed some artorin on it -- the opening of the hymn to Elbereth from Lord of the Rings: "A Elbereth Gilthoniel silivren penna miriel," which signifies in Sindarin, "O Star-Queen, Star-Kindler, white-glittering, slants down like sparkling jewels." The implied subject of that predicate is "elenath," the "star-host." I love Sindarin and I love Quenya, but Eranor, which is perhaps of later evolution (I'm not sure of the relative timeline) combines qualities of each. Ah, if Peter Jackson and his team would only apply themselves next to the Silmarillion!

I'm thinking at the moment of spinning out these journal entries and other thoughts on magick and the elves into a book that uses the process of wandmaking as a vehicle of meditation on such matters. May the muse help me to write it! Apropos of the remarks about a wizard school in the last entry, I spent a little time over Thanksgiving vacation sketching out a five year curriculum for the study of druidcraft. It would have to be a small school, but it would be nice to have it be residential and communal in its maintenance -- perhaps 48 students in residence at any given time. I haven't calculated the faculty requrements yet... A low student-teacher ratio and a light teaching load for the professors - that would be my dream of a fine school. I realised, however, that lessons in the harp would be needed for a Bardic curriculum and so I have a bee in my bonnet now about buying a Celtic lap harp and learning to play it... The Gemini mind is so scattered...

(#12) Winter Solstice 2003 (December 22) - 1 Luis 2003.

I cannot believe I have procrastinated a whole year in writing another entry to this journal. It has been a busy year of wandmaking and my thanks go out to all my clients. Recently I added the Fellowship of Wandmakers page and am very happy that it has attracted the attention of some of my fellow wandmakers, at least. I've had the pleasure of viewing some very fine work and am always amazed at the originality of styles each wandmaker expresses. Alas, another Yule is here and I have not yet bought that Celtic harp either! But I have made some good progress in the creation of Avalon College of Druidry. At the Druid's Head pub, OBOD's message board, I've made many friends and some of these have joined me on an Advisory Board as a first step toward creating Avalon College as a living, breathing institution. My hope is that within the next annum we will see the college incorporated as a non-profit organization and finalize its business plan and curriculum plan. After that, finding a site and attracting faculty, students, and donors are all challenges that must be met in order for the idea to become manifest. There are many wiser and more experiences Druids, witches, and mages who might seem better suited to the task of leading this venture, but here I am, so I shall carry on as best I may. There is a certain hint of hubris in one who thinks that he or she can found a college such as this, and I haven't quite enough hubris -- or even chuzpa -- to feel entirely comfortable in such a leadership role. So, my strategy, to share a little secret, is to gather to the task all the best people I can find, so that in time I can go off to my shop and just carve wood.

Don't tell anyone!

(#13) Imbolc 2004.

Ah, we await the new stirrings of the seeds of spring. In Minnesota it takes a lot of faith and imagination to beleive that the fires of Brighid stir in the frozen earth. The year has emerged for me with many new seeds. The first is a new seed-group here in Minnesota which I am leading. Though just a few fellow Druids now, it is our goal to grow into a fully blossoming Grove of OBOD before many Winters pass. One of the members of the Geal-Darach Grove is a promising young woodcarver whom I have taken on as my apprentice. Jeff Smith lives here in the Twin Cities area and is working with me to learn the craft of wandmaking. Soon we'll be adding some pictures of his work to the website and putting up a page of his own. I'm hoping that with Jeff's help I will get to work again on my languishing book project about wandmaking. Meanwhile, I have been absorbed in trying to get my house in order from a business standpoint, instituting better book-keeping and record-keeping for Bard Woodcrafts and the Bardic Institute. The Institute continues to serve as the magic cauldron of gestation for Avalon College of Druidry, for which I am working on details of the curriculum plan and articles of incorporation while the search for land and start-up capital continues apace rather like the Quest for the Holy Grail.

(#14) Lughnasadh 2004.

Re-reading the last entry, made at the start of this eventful year, I can only chuckle. I don't think I've done my books since I wrote that. So much for my business management skills. (There was a reason I didn't major in Business Administration in college). On the other hand, Azrienoch has proven to be an excellent apprentice and a good friend. We have made quite a lot of wands this year but business has been rather slow otherwise. My book about wandmaking is still languishing, as are all my other writing projects but I have been giving a lot of time to Avalon College. Most recently I journeyed south of the Twin Cities to Goodhue and Rice counties where I've been looking at properties. There really are no shortage of marvelous farms and vacant land available but until we have some kind of consortium of investors to pay for it, we cannot really make any move to acquire property, alas. And, partnering with an existing ecovillage cohousing project might be still more sensible. In September Bard Woodcrafts will have a table at Pagan Pride Gathering at the University of Minnesota, always a fun event.

(#15) Samhuinn 2005.

Well, it is about time I made another entry in this journal. Since I started this thing, Blogging and LiveJournal has become all the rage, which makes me less inclined than initially to keep this up. Now it seems like part of a rather strange phenomenon of everyone and their brother putting their journals online. Everyone wants to be a published writer and now they can be - at the press of a button. Oh well.

Much has changed at Bard Woodcrafts since I last wrote, nearly a year ago!. Most notably, my apprentice Azrienoch Mellessar has moved on to other things, having found that the wandmaking business was not quite what he thought. I think he got tired of the Elves pinching him and all the owl poop. And working in a dungeon is no picnic, I'll have to admit. In the past year too, I have become aware of many more wandmakers selling their wares over the Internet. Almost all of these are people making Harry Potter style wands on lathes. Although, I have roughed out a few wands using a lathe borrowed from a friend, I still do not have space or money to set up my own lathe, and as lovely as these wands are, the style does not appeal to me much. They haven't the life and personality of a wand made from an actual branch and allowed to have its shape. In any case, there are so many adept turners making wands, there hardly seems much point in my doing so.

In the past year also, I have completed my Druid Grade studies with the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, and have been managing Avalon College of Druidry as a sort of cottage industry. At present we have no physical campus but are offering distance learning courses over the Net. I spend a good deal of time each day cudgelling my brains to try to figure out how to establish the institution in the physical world. This will require me to marshall the commitment and energy of a number of partners. It will require a critical mass of teachers who are willing to take the risk to move to the campus and contribute to its operations on the ground and not just in the aethers. It will require some kind of endowment by wealthy donors who believe that a Druidic college is something they want to see realized. Unfortunately for the dream, I am not personally very well-expereinced in developing land or seeking out wealthy donors. My experience lies in the realms of academia, so that I can do what I am doing at present -- namely, teaching and administration. But there are serious limitations there too. One person can only do so much to recruit teachers in a culture completely without professional organizations and young master's and Ph.D. students ready at hand with some teaching experience and training. So, a very tricky business.

And it is this, principally, that has taken me away from my wand making. However, I have kept up a steady flow of wands and in the past year also added athames, wooden boxes, and staves to my repertoire of products that I can offer my clients. The craft of working with wood is more than a hobby to me. It is a spiritual discipline, a way of communing intimately with the spirits of the trees and the flow of life. As such, it must be a continuous quest for new horizons. Box making is a good example. It involves skills and a relationship to the wood that is utterly different from than involved in wand making. The carving is much the same, but the construction of a box is something else -- an engagement with the mysteries of measure, dimension, and geometry. It is about the intersection of planes in space and about allowing the wood to express itself.

All's well here in the Purple Hat Sect of Druidry. Geal-Darach Grove continues apace. Although many of the peripheral folks who have attended grove meetings in the past have drifted away, there is new hope in the two new OBOD bards I helped initiate this Samhuinn. It might be nice if more of the OBOD members in the region would attend and contribute seriously to the grove, but Druidry is an individual spiritual path, a search for one's own meaning and one's own relationship to nature. I'm not sure if there is any way to entice more members out of the woods, but they will be welcome if they come. OBOD groves don't lend themselves too well to visitors who don't want to join the order, I think. Merely going through the seasonal celebrations the year round is not likely to give anyone much satisfaction if they are not pursuing serious inner work at the same time, which is really what the order is about. It isn't about neopagan worship of old gods -- not principally. OBOD is about seeking the inner wisdom of one's own spirit guides, encountering one's ancestors, establishing relationship to the land and the trees. I feel sorry for the urban druids who cannot manage to feel connected to the land. I would rather live in the country myself, but that doesn't mean that I feel no connection to the trees, plants, animals, and the spriits of the land here in Minneapolis. The Great River runs through the Twin Cities. On only needs to open one's eyes.

I'm still dreaming of travelling to England again -- and wishing also to travel to Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Iceland, Scadinavia and Brittany. But the family finances need to be attended to and the money has to come from somewhere. With luck we will all go over to England for the Midsummer gathering and annual assembly of OBOD in 2006. Meanwhile, I have lots of books to read and they are predicting snow tonight....

(#16) Bealtaine 2006.

Well, I can't believe it's been since Samhuinn since I made an entry here. Sheesh! My only excuse is that I've been hibernating in my hollow log. I am happy to say following that last entry that I am going to England this summer -- in just under a month on June 5th. Huzzah! I will be staying three nights in London to see some of the literary sights and poke about in antiquarian books stores. Then on to Glastonbury for the OBOD annual assembly. Then my good friend Astrocelt is going to show me around Wales for a few more days, with hopefully more book shopping. My longsuffering lady wife plans to give me a strict budget for library acquisitions. Lately I've been feeling a bit put out because of all the books I've bought and the little time I have to read them. Have to work on that.

I've been box making - wooden boxes. I've just completed a very complicated one with little partitions in it to hold bottles of essential oils and tinctures. I swear that everything that could go wrong did go wrong with that box and a few things that were clearly supernatural. For example, perhaps the greatest example of supernatural going awry was when I went to the hardware store for brass screws. I put them in a little plastic bag in the shop, counted them carefully (there were ten) and paid for them. I put them in my pocket, went home, opened the plastic bag and there were only four. It has been like that for months.

I have two theories. One is that the large number of Scotch whiskey bottles in the house has drawn an infestation of Nac Mac Feegle. The other is that the spirits don't want me to apply my talents to box making. The reason for this, I suspect is that it requires power tools and they don't like the noise. Loud steel engines are very disturbing to the Elves. However, I am not prepared to give up quite yet. For one thing, I still have another box commission I have to finish. I've been experimenting with design as well as technique, and have only made a total of three boxes so far, so it would be silly to give up. I think I'll try soliciting the help of the Elves, and maybe leave out a glass of whisky for the Feegles.

My gentleman's group was discussing tools this month around the fire pit in my garden and the following is a piece that I wrote prompted by that discussion:

On Sex and Power Tools and the Obsession with Speed

by Hamish MacAllan O'Toole

N our discussion of power tools versus hand tools (or no tools) I found I was not able to communicate my own subjective and metaphysical impressions of the matter. One of the things the Baron von Drum was arguing was that the use of power tools is not intrinsically different from using hand tools in terms of "distancing" one from the materials of the work. I had expressed my feeling that using power tools made me feel as if I were removed from the wood, when woodworking. I have such a spiritual and personal relationship with the wood when I am woodworking that it seems to me like a living thing, not a dead object to be objectively manipulated. Yet, of course, in carving there is a certain quality of manipulation; however, the process for me involves a mental and emotional connection to the spirit of the wood.

I also was inclined to agree with Baron von Meyer's assertion that taking time and going slow is a virtue. Rather like lovemaking: One wants to take one's time and the use of power tools seems a bit kinky (though certainly not unknown in human behavior). The importance of touch and attention is integral to the relationship of creator to material. The physical touch matters on a spiritual level. Or put another way, the state of one's consciousness is altered by engagement through the sense of touch and indeed through slowness. Compare going for a hike to riding a bicycle, to riding in a car or airplane. Each time speed is traded for loss of consciousness of one's surroundings - the world of the present moment, of Nature, and even of the human-built environment.

In using power tools this sensual engagement is, for me, disrupted. The noise of the engines, the high-pitched whine -- indeed, one has to be careful not to touch, or to touch in highly ritualized ways for safety. The push stick is the condom of the wood shop. Wearing ear protection is another dimension of this sensual dulling and removal. A further aspect of distancing is, as I said at the moot, like using a computer to write rather than a fountain pen or a pencil. There is something valuable in the movements of the human hand. In the case of writing with a pen, one is engaged directly in the formation of the letters and sentences. Every stroke contains and embodies some of the writer's personality, and the hand feels the ink, the quality of the paper. The modern world's drift away from the quill and fountain pen to the cheap disposable biro and poor quality paper (or none at all) reflects a lack of bodily engagement, a lack of aesthetic appreciation, sensuality, a move toward that disembodied idea of Rationality freed from Nature that has driven Christian culture for centuries. Such a move says that the act of writing is nothing important, a merely Utilitarian action. Freud would say that the pen as tool has become a depersonalized thing, and like the dehumanized penis the pen is merely for reproduction, not love and ecstasy.

Likewise the chisel and the plane. There is a direct act of love involved in working with chisel and plane, a simplicity in the need to hand sharpen the blades. For me, it is the same difference as that between going into battle with a sword, facing one's foe eye to eye, and the modern sort of warfare that employs bombs, missles, and automatic machine guns. There is no respect in such killing, and war without respect is pretty much just murder. The sword has a mystique, an elegance, which is not just attributable to romanticism. So too, in miniature, the chisel. One does not necessarily think about it all the time, but the relationship to the sharpened blade is something primordial, that goes back further and runs deeper even than reading and writing.

The use of tools that may seem archaic and outdated today is a distinctly pagan act too, quite apart from religion, because it is a particular philosophical attitude toward history. History, by this view, is not something that happened in the past and cannot be recovered; nor it is something old that needs to be superceded in the linear course of "progress". Such concepts are essentially Christian. Rather, history is something here and now, part of our present moment. It is our relationship to the relics and remains of our ancestors, here and now. To engage with tools used by our ancestors instead of the latest, newest thing, honors them and creates in our souls the relationship to those ancestors.

The craftsman who was apprenticed by his father who was apprenticed by his grandfather is the old and clear example of this kind of continuity. But one can forge a relationship to such ancestors by spirit as well as by blood (though the blood relationship does make it easier to learn the craft by virtue of hands-on demonstration and regular beatings when you do things wrong). Such a relationship is not static, of course. Craftsmen have always improved their tools and invented new ones, as well as inventing new techniques. But the age of the machine has seen our civilization lose so much. We have changed our relationship to the present moment in the love affair with engines and speed. A love affair that has largely replaced our love of other human beings -- ancestors, masters -- and our love of the spirit of the material world, which has become soulless an inanimate.

There must be something deep-seated in the human psyche (in men at least) that loves speed and power. The ability to use a machine or another animal to do more than what one can do with one's own body and skill seems to hold a great allure for many people. There is an element of "practicality" to it, naturally: One is pressed for time by the competition of others. Or one simply wants to grow rich and powerful as fast as one can. The use of machines permits things to happen faster but is that a good thing on a spiritual level? Have we created more security along with more wealth in the mad race to accumulate in order to assure survival? One is driven by this insane obsession with survival beyond all reason. I'm reminded of something I read about chipmunks. They only live for a year, yet they spend all summer gathering enough food in their den to last for many years -- far more than they can eat and more than they need. And then, of course, they get eaten by the cat. The mad obsession with accumulation of wealth to assuage one's fearful survival urge is, in humans, simply greed, a sickness. Similarly, the boredom that afflicts those who cannot wait and must speed ahead, even to the point of breaking the civil laws because they are in such a hurry -- this is also a sickness of the soul.

Where has this mania for racing, for competition rather than cooperation, gotten us? Where has a culture that finds virtue in pitting one maker against another taken us in that speedy, thrilling ride of "progress"? I am skeptical. It seems to derive from the old warrior caste mentality that pitted one knight in competition with another, constantly testing and striving for who would win the champion's portion at the feast. Arguably, this kind of competition leads to greater skill, for those warriors who are not motivated by the inner fire to simply improve themselves.

I'll admit, in woodworking it is important to be able to see the wonderful achievements of other wood workers, masters of the craft. But I don't consider myself motivated by competition. Of course, I'm not making a living by the craft. In the case of the warrior caste, being good at the craft might be a matter of living or dying. But then again, among the old Celts, fear of death was not in the warrior's vocabulary. It was art for the sake of art and sacrifice for the sake of the honor and safety of one's tribe. Those sentiments are still there at the bottom of the Puritan work ethic.

The Puritans believed that the more you worked the less likely it was for Satan to grab you and drag you to Hell. No dancing, singing, card playing, or sex, and certainly no idle loafing thinking about things. Just good hard work. But the mercantile and craft ethos that also came to underly our culture had in it this idea of free competition as a good in itself that would inevitably lead to low prices and quality goods. If we look back over the historical record and at our present age, there is no question that we have tons and tons of stuff. Neat electronic gismos abound, engines of creation and destruction. Distractions from engagement with the natural world and our neighbors every one. Machine interaction has replaced human interaction. Well, just look at this blogg! I never did write the Piltdownerblatt with a fountain pen, and certainly this medium has many advantages of speed to create a neat and aesthetically pleasing medium. However, the paper Piltdownerblatts in the mail had their own appeal -- so I'm told. That is lost along with the pleasure, joy, and permanency of exchanging handwritten letters in the mail. A collection of my grandfather's letters is one of our family's treasures.

The Internet and computers are the tools of our trades these days and it is perhaps this constant engagement with the miraculous machines of speed in my work that leads me all the more to need to get away from engines and precision and try to do things with just my hands and the bare minimum of tools. I've had fellow druids suggest that wands should be made with a knapped flint for the truly prehistoric touch. I'm not inclined to go that far. The line for me comes with the whirling speed of engines. Give me a pony, an ox, a trowel and a hand saw and the skill to use them well.

I'm the same way with cooking. I'd rather cut vegetables with a knife than use a food processor. However, to be sure, there are power tools that can do things that humans cannot do otherwise. For example, take the lathe. Now, I would like a pedal lathe that I could run without an engine, but there is no question that the machine is necessary to make things perfectly round and symmetrical. The lathe is a very old tool. Archaeologist have found evidence that the Iron Age Britons had them. Similarly, the Cuisinart is my tool of choice if I have to purée a soup or grate potatoes for hash browns. So, don't think that I am a complete Luddite. However, it is worth thinking about how using machines can disengage us from our food as well. For the sake of saving some scraped knuckles and time, I lose an opportunity to engage on a personal level with the potatoes. (Still, I do peel them by hand.)

That may not seem important until one realizes that the cultivation of that attitutde of lack of attention spreads into our relationships to each other. Suddenly we are processing our family through machines too - televisions, telephones, and gameboys, computers, and cars. Even when we are together, we may be "plugged in" and so tuned out from each other. Is that good? I don't think so. Some people apparently do think it is good. Plug into your iPod instead of making the acquaintance of the person next to you on the bus or train. Put on a walkman instead of listening to the birds and the wind in the leaves. Such a life is inimical to the druidic life I seek. How can one ever expect to hear the voices of the tress or the rest of the non-human animal world if one is so totally wrapped up in the manmade world of technology and things? Stuffed animals are all well and good, but they should not be considered replacements for a real puppy.

So, this business of power tools is something which, for me, goes beyond one's practical exercise of craft. It connects to everything else through the medium of the soul. We are what we make. And we are how we make it. Making machines and revering robots does not need to turn us into robots and mechanisms, but in order to prevent it from doing so, we need to understand the difference between living as a human being and machinery. Our culture has for centuries been built on the myth (the metaphor) that bodies are machines, that Nature itself is a machine. That is, in my estimation, a mistake. A mistake of metaphor for literal truth. Let the machines be themselves, and let us not forget what we are and that machines are not "superior" to us. They are just different. They have their strong points, but so do we, if only we will pay attention to the spirit that resides in us.

The myth of the machine needs to be exposed for what it is, so that we can disentagle our souls from the gears and circuits. We do not need to strive to be better by becoming more like machines. And we do not need to satisfy our fantasies of being super speedy and super strong by building more and more machines. Those fantasies are in some ways natural but they are these days fed by vast propaganda machines and have reached the point of pathology. People strive to get rich by convincing us that we need to buy more stuff -- more technology, electronics, cars, cosmetics, consume more mass media news and entertainment. Are we convinced? Are we convinced that machinery and mechanization is what gives our lives value? Is that being human?

I'm going to go cut some dados now with my fancy new dado blade, and first I have to make a jig. But I wish I didn't have to. I wish I could saw a straight line with a hand saw. I think that would give me much more self esteem and gratification than learning to use the power saw. We'll see.

(#17) Betwixt Lughnasa and Alban Elfed 2006.

I'm relieved to see that it actually has not been that long since I made an entry to this journal. Although I'm keeping a Live Journal journal now too, in my role as Avalon Chancellor, this old-fashioned sort of journal that I started before I had even heard of "blogs" suits me. It's like a long scroll, rather than like a database. You see the difference. At the moment I am enjoying a spate of orders that mercifully do not include any wooden boxes. I managed to get three boxes made in my adventure in boxmaking and I would like to find time to return to it just to perfect my design and techniques. Each box I made was different and each had mistakes in it. As a perfectionist, mistakes are painful to me. With the wands, most mistakes can be fixed, but with boxmaking if you measure wrong or put the dovetails in the wrong way around, you can't do anything but start over with a new piece of wood.

There has also been increasing interest in athames, so I am going to order in some blade kits that will allow me to make them with metal blades as well as obsidian. Obsidian is lovely and so delightfully stone age, but very fragile. I attended a flint-knapping demonstration and met a flit knapper who does knife blades. I have to find his card again and give him a call. His workshop is in a small town in southern Minnesota, so it is possible for me to visit. A flint blade would be quite neat. I'm also thinking of taking a knife-making class. There are actually quite a few offered around and about at two different folk art schools here.

This is my favorite time of year. School has started so I have six hours a day when the wee lassie is in school and occupied without my needing to supervise. I have not yet begun to get a lot done with all this wealth of time, but that's partly because the weather has been so delightful this week that I just want to sit in the sun and read or sew. Sewing pointy hats, by the way, is another item that I am going to perhaps add to my shop. It isn't "woodcrafts" of course, but is an item I rather like making and I'm using the hats as a way to practice my sewing skills, which have always been rather amateurish. With hats, you actually have to get the size right, which is a challenge. I've made several hats but none have come out perfect, so I picked up some fabric remnants today, hoping I could find time to make some more. The basic design is like that of my own purple hat that was made by someone else to go with my purple chancellor's robes. Yes, I know, I'm vain of my appearance. Comes from not being very pretty, I expect. Or maybe it is just the Leo Moon and Ascendant in my nativity.

The garden is still lush but winding down for Autumn and I'm collecting seeds from some of the plants. I ought to make myself a box with compartments for tinctures and oils. Especially now that I've made one and can hopefully do better the second time. Hinges! Hinges are so difficult. I have a book that describes making wooden hinges and I'd like to try that. And so back to the dust...

(#18) The 14th of Mór 6007

Looking back over this journal and the erratic dating systems I've used, good luck to anyone trying to figure it out. I started using the Robert Graves Tree-months, but then switched to my own Elvish system and now have decided to stick to the year-dating from the inceptin of agriculture in Britain (according to Davies History of Wales). I'm also going to adhere to the Druidical custom of considering the beginning of night to be the start of the "day" and the beginning of Winter (Samhuinn) to be the start of the year. There are no "months" in the Alferic calendar, but only Halls, which correspond to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. Just so you know.

Thus today is the 14th day of Mór, meaning "The Sea" in Eranor. As in Gaelic, it also means "Great" or "Vast" and is more or less an epithet for the sea. However, in Eranor any given word will have multiple meanings and dimensioins, so one can only say that the word mór denotes a Sea, a vastness, an abyss, a great mystery that is hidden from the ordinary eye, as well as what we call outer space, a tremendous vista from a mountaintop, and much more. The thing about Eranor is that there is no separating what we might call "poetic" meanings or connotations from denotative meaning. The Sarithin have had wars over the creation of dictionaries and those that wanted to create them lost (See Dougal O'Cumhail The War of the Books: A Chronology with an Analytical Essay. Iona: Panenthon Books, 1025; pp. 622-657 and appendix VI "Lexical Combat in the Sarith Star Kingdoms). The Hall of Mór is also called Hisimë, which basically just means the beginning of the cold gray season. The Calendar of Imladris uses that name. I suspect that Elrond and his companions kept the tree-reconning of the ogam to themselves.

The Mór from Snowdon in Gwynedd.

Anyway, in Roman terms, this means it is November and just two days after the Piltdown Gentlmen's Club had its annual Moby Dick Moot. There, while the other gentlemen ate clam chowder, prepared by our esteemed hostess, Mrs. Hussey, I performed a dramatic reading of the chapter "Chowder" complete with harpoon. Next year, I think we should do it as a pantomime. It is not a bleak drizzly November in my soul. Actually it is quite warm for the time, but it has clouded over so ther might be some hope for snow. We enjoyed sunshine yesterday and raked leaves. I've been finishing up a yew wand and laboring over a walnut wand that is driving me nuts. It's a natual branch of walnut and I don't know if it is just this branch or that my knives have all gone dull at once, or what, but nothing wants to cut cleaning across the fibers of this wood. I carved a wolf's head holding the point stone of snowflake obsidian, and that went alright, but the cross-grain cutting is leaving rough surfaces and it is proving very difficult to get these surfaces smooth. It's little use sanding them if they are full of little bits of torn fibers poking out all over, like fur.

In carving the oak leaves and acorns on the shaft, I've taken to incising the design with a straight carving knife and then carefully working away the negative space using those slicings as stops. The vee-tools are all just tearing. Most annoying. But looking at my vee-tools under the magnifier, it does appear that they aren't coming to a proper "V" anymore, and once they get off that way, there's no amount of sharpening I can do that will restore them properly. They are just too small for my bad eyes to see whether I'm sharpening them at the right angle to restore the Vee. I don't like throwing away tools, but I do have to sometimes just because I can't sharpen them anymore. I admire the old woodworkers who kept their tools for generations.

At the American Swedish Institute this weekend I bought a carving DVD by Harvy Refstal, one of the great preservers of traditional Swedish style flat plane carving. I have one of his books but I thought the DVD would help. Sometimes you need to just see how things are done and still pictures in a book are not adequate. Hey, maybe I can do a DVD of my wandmaking book once it is published! Ha!

Speaking of which, I have not made enough time to work on the book and so it is stalled again. I need to put in some time today. Also need to enchant that yew wand and make a box for it and for an athame I just mailed of a week or two ago. I mailed it without a box and the client would like one, so I need to do some cutting and gluing for those. I go through different craft modes when making wands. For a time it is a matter of woodworking, then it is a matter of enchantment, then a matter of sewing as I make the wand bags, and finally it is a matter of box-making out of matte board, paper and glue. All of this I must do myself, as I have no apprentice at present. When my daughter is a little older, she might be willing to help for some extra money, but she's too impatient right now. I'd advertise for an apprentice, except that the wandmaking business is such a small realm that it hardly seems sensible to train another wandmaker in the same area. Azrienoch, my apprentice of a couple years ago, decided not to go into the business himself but to write books instead. But the point of having an apprentice is to have someone who can help around the shop in exchange for learning the craft. Besides that, it is a bit hard to come by someone who has the requisite training in the magical side of things and I don't really want to set up shop as a teacher of magic. I haven't got time for everything I'm doing now. You might notice that at Avalon Center, I leave the Magical Arts classes to others.

There are two reasons for this decision. One is simply lack of time. Another is that I have a morbid fear of being mistaken for a guru (a spiritual teacher). I haven't got either the talent or the "purity" people expect to find in a guru. And third (three reasons), I have very mixed feelings about teaching my own idosyncratic style of magic. I think it is better for a student to develop his or her own approach than to learn that of his or her teacher. And mine, because of all the Elvish material in it, it problematic. I have even less desire to become the head of a separate magical "tradition". Oh well. Oh, and a fourth reason is really that druidic magic is so subtle and I would like to devote more energy to practicing it and studying it before taking on the role of teacher where, like it or not, you are expected to know things.

So, the shop goes on. I have plenty of orders to finish, unfortunately, the money I earn for these wands is almost always already spent because of our family debts. We are just way behind and don't live within out means. However, to live within our means, I think we'd have move to a cheaper country and its the old Faustian bargain: the jobs are in the city, and the houses in the city are expensive in the good neighborhoods. None of us wants to move. Fortune did favor me this past week, however, in that my car's starter died again and so I sold poor old Merlin to one of the mechnics at the local garage. So, now I'm goin' back on the bicycle and the bus. This will both increase the amount of exercise I get and save some money in gas, repairs, and insurance. No more trips to England for me, I'm afraid. This summer's splendid journey to connect with my British druid friends, added to an already overburdened credit card debt. So, the fiscal goals for this coming year (that started on Säwen) is to earn as much money as I can in the wand and staff-making business and pay off at least one of our credit cards (the one that's gone off the deep end). New Year's resolution. I'm just praying I don't have to take another part-time job as this will make administering ACDS very difficult.

(#19) The 9th of Narvinyë 6007

That's January 29th 2007 to you Romans. In the Elvish calendrical customs I keep, this is the Hall of Huathe, the Hawthorn. Aquarius is the name given to this sign of the Zodiac by the Romans. We just can't get away from those Romans, an we? I don't write in this Woodworkers journal as much as I should, but when I'm at the Mac I'm usually in the guise of Avalon Center chancellor or some other hat, not my woodcarving self. At the moment things in the shop are quiet, I'm experimenting (at the request of a client) in making some rune and ogham chips. Sort of oval cross-sections of a large branch with the signs carved and then inked into them. I'm still messing about with the idea. The idea of tree divination interests me, even though I can't say I am at all gifted as a diviner. My friend Mangan Tairis says that he engages in chronomancy - you wait around to see what will happen. That's more my way of working too. But, under the good influence of my anam cara, Chalcedoni Scott, I am endeavoring to be more pious and faithful and sit at my altar to talk to the Ancestors, among whom are included those notables some will insist upon calling "gods."

This morning on Air America Radio I heard a commercial for an organization of atheists. Something like the Society for Freedom from Religion. I tend in that direction myself. I have talked to divinities and invisible entities for as long as I can remember, but I've become very skeptical of other people's religion and the idea of a group of people getting together to think alike and embrace the same myths as literal guides to life, just gives me the shivvers. Still, one shouldn't blame the divinities for the conformism of their followers.

One interesting wandmaking quandary that I recently ran across was prompted by a client who wanted me to make a wand out of a wand that had already been crafted by another wandmaker. I didn't really think the whole thing through until I had the wand in my hand and then it became quite obviious to me that I should not mess with the work of another wandmaker. How would I feel, after all, if someone bought one of my wands and then gave it to someone else to modify? Well, I should feel quite hurt, but more than that, there seems to be something magically wrong with messing about with a wand once it has been made a wand. I do not mind if clients send me unworked branches to carve, but a branch that has already been made into a wand (however simple) has been imbued with magical purpose and it seems as if to break the spell of making in the wand would violate some fundamental ethic of wandmaking. I'd never realized that before, so it waa a lesson to me. It is a bit like getting a painting that has been done by one painter and then asking another painter to paint on its some more.

I'm getting more and more cantankerous in my old age (47 this coming May), and am getting less patient with wand customers who think they know what they want because it does happen that sometimes they don't . They are trying to assert their own will over the wand, designing it in a very miniscule way -- what we might call micromanaging in another context. When I approach a branch or even a milled piece of wood from the lumber mill, I let it speak to me and I do what it tells me to do. I don't try to impose my own will on it, especially if it objects. Twice now I have had commissions fail because the client wanted things just so and in a certain way while the wood was telling me something different. In one case, the client returned the piece and in the other case, I ended up refusing the commission. There are few things less pleasant, as an artist, that being micromanaged by a client. I've made a lot of custom comissions - hundreds in fact - but in almost every case the client trusted my judgment and the voice of the wood over their own preconceived ideas of design. I like that. It is necessary to get some guidance from the client, certainly. It's a bit annoying when one says, 'Do whatever you like" because then you run the risk of having the final product rejected or unsatisfactory. There are always some customers, especially when doing business via a web shop, who see a picture and want to order the wand in the picture and have it delivered tomorrow. There are plenty of wandmakers who do produce stock items and keep quantities of particular styles on hand. It's like buying a suit off the rack.

Well, I'm geting too old for that, I think, and too impatient. I want to take some time to just carve some wands, some of the old designs I've done before, and perfect them, and experiemnt with new designs and then put those wands out in the Stock section of the web site for people to buy. That way, they can look at the picture and see what they are ordering, and if they receive the wand and it isn't what they expected, they can return it. That is a better way of working, from my point of view, than taking custom comissions and having to check back and forth at so many stages with the client. I think I will have to start charging more for commissions. It is just too much more work and I don't do this as a "business" in the ordinary sense. If I didn't ever get another comission for a wand, it would not bother me in the least. I'd still carry on messing about with sticks.

If you are reading these words, the blessings of Imbolc upon you (whatever time of year it may be when you read them). Light of Brighid shining through the snowy land. May the new voices of the lambs awaken love in your heart.

(#20) 14th of Narvinyë 6007. Friday.

I've been updating the web site and have finally taken the time to figure out how to upload files directly from Adobe GoLive, which is so lovely. Instead of using a separate FTP "client" as the geeks call software, I can now do my editing and uploading all from the same program, slick as a whistle. I've added some new pictures and content, and decided to include the rune set I made on the In Stock page and offer it for sale. I carved this set out of rowan and am still going to experiment with other techniques. I feel that traditionally speaking they ought to be made of Yew, as that is the wood that is closest to the doorways of the Otherworld. Rowan, however, along with Thorn are Faery trees quite often and so I feel they have close ties to the Otherworlds too. Of course there is a subtle difference between consulting your ancestors and consulting Faerie folk. The denizens of Faerie are not all reliable and most of them love to play tricks. Some are very condescending towards "mortals" and consider them playthings - rather like we tease a dog or cat, violate their personal space, and so on. So, I'm not sure if Rowan wood will affect the reliability of divination done with these runes. I would speculate that it would depend upon how one consecrated them and established a rapport. After all, when one establishes a rapport with any sort of oracle, it is not the material runestaves, ogham staves, or cards that one contacts. They are the doorway, the medium, the objective correllative, for that inner world to which one connects. I'm not particularly adept ad divination, mostly through sheer laziness.

It is that laziness and tendency to get distracted that has prompted me (among other reasons) to join a proper magical lodge. A friend of mine in Minneapolis is an officer of the Astrum Sophia and I have joined as a Probationer. I will be working over the next few weeks or months to arrive at the point where they will take me to the tememos and initiate me into the First Hall. It is quite exciting for me to be taking this step away from solitary study and practice to a more structured and guided, and collegial work. It will be more collegial than my years of work with OBOD for the simple reason that the lodge is local -- I should say Commandery or House in the terminology of the Order. I have also taken the first steps to join my local lodge of Freemasons, Lake Harriet Lodge #277 AF & AM where I look forward to being initiated in April. It is heartening to have people sponsor one into a fraternal organization and to be able to look ahead to the pursuit of degrees, as there is no doubt that degrees of all kinds allow one to measure one's growth and achievement, the Magnum Opus of the perfection of one's soul. I do not mean by "perfection" that there is some sort of static "perfect" state at which one can arrive and be done. The word "perfect" has taken on that strange connotation. For mean perfection is a process and to say something is "perfect" means that is exhibits the qualities of that process. The process is one which moves an entity in the direction of transformation, of harmony and connectedness, and wholeness. One might also characterize it as connection to the Divine, or the realization in the entity of the Divine.

We sometimes think of perfection in terms of mathematics or precision. Symmetry inspires the feeling of perfection, but sometimes so does a lack of symmetry. I don't adhere to the Classical ideal of perfect form alone. Harmony, balance, symmetry, the Golden Ratio -- such things do inspire the feeling of perfection, but so also is a quality of an entity simply becoming itself. An oak tree possesses very little symmetry and classical balance, yet one can feel its perfection as it grows into its own wholeness. There is a feeling of destiny perhaps in the acorn, which somehow contains within it the germ of the whole tree, a transcendental dimension of being that goes outside of time so that acorn and oak tree are one entity in Eternity. The same is true of human beings. We have an innate belief that we can improve ourselves, grow, and branch, and find our form. This is sometimes improvement according to an established model - to become more compassionate, more engaged in community, in service, or just as well to pursue physical perfection as bodybuilders and atheletes do - perfection of form or performance. One can set out to improve one's mind as well as one's morals and one's body. Freemasonry and all the various orders and lodges that have descended from it in the past three hundred years or so, all strive after these kinds of self-perfection and brotherhood within a fraternity of people seeking the same kind of goals.

When I carve a wand, I am also seeking that kind of perfection, removing the wood, smoothing, polishing, to find the wand's proper shape, the realization of its destiny. When I find branches lying about they often speak to me of their potential destiny as wands. They call to me and my eye and hand examine them to see into that Eternal dimension of being. What seems like potential to us, lodged here in Time, is manifest in Eternity.

(#21) The 14th of Narië 6007. Moon Day.

I just received such a lovely letter from Kristy Settle in Scotland. She contacted me a few weeks ago out of the blue to say that she had been inspired by my wandwork to make her own wands and also to write a jig for the bagpipes which she wanted to title "Alferian's Jig". She sent me the music, two photos of some fine wands she has made, and a very kind letter. It is so nice to receive real mail, handwritten letters have so gone out of our culture. The telephone was the death-blow to letter-writing and e-mail is the decomposed body of it, I suppose. The skeletal remains. The body of the Man of Letters sunk in a bog.

I write so many letters in a week, but almost all of them are by e-mail. I should quit it and take pen to paper and write by hand and pop them in the post. It must be so dreary these days to be a letter carrier knowing that you mainly carry dreaded bills and unwanted catalogs and advertising. Gone are the days when the postman knew he was the vehicle of everyone's life, carrying their love letters, private business, and the decisions of the rich and powerful. Letters are wonderful things. Just watch the Antiques Road Show to see how valuable they can become if preserved. They are precious historical documents of our lives, and I have no faith in computers and electronics to suppose that preserving the evidence of our existences on CD's or on servers and hard drives are substitutes. But then I'm old fashioned.

Now I shall need to learn to play this jig and dance to it. There can hardly be anything more delightful than to have a bard name a tune after you. I am humbled and thankful.

It is also heartwarming to know that my carving and craft inspires other wandmakers and individuals who are making wands for their private use. I'm working today on the manuscript of my wandmaking book and hope that this week I will be able to get it closer to completion so I can mail it off to the editors at Llewellyn Publications. I have a friendly relationship with two of the adquisitions editors there and am hopeful they might wish to buy the manuscript. It would certainly be welcome and sorely needed revenue to compensate for what I have spent keeping Avalon Center running.

As I noted in my Live Journal, yesterday, I have taken by 3rd Degree in Masonry and am now a Master Mason. It is such a feeling of accomplishment and pride to be inducted into such an old and noble fraternity of brothers all seeking to improve themselves in virtue and light. I am excited about the prospects for service to the lodge and Grand Lodge. This work with the craft of the stonemason and the symbolic dramas that have been build around it by speculative Masonry, lends new insights into my work as a wood carver too. Wandmaking is a bit like Freemasonry, I realize, in that it is both based on an operative craft taken to a philosophical higher octave. It is a pity so few people know anything about Freemasonry. There are a lot of good books in print, but one has to look for them. The book stores mostly just have wild conspiracy theory books or esoteric books with elaborate histoical speculations about Masonry's origins. Some of the books are quite interesting, but mostly make sense only to Masons who understand the actual experiential reality of the fraternity. I hardly think there is a religion on earth that can match the use of morality plays and dramas in which the members participate. It is as if going to church every week was like the Christmas pageant, except that the whole congregation participated.

I do think that Druidry has the capacity to be like that and I hope to set my mind to it. The seasonal celebrations are certainly participatory and have an element of symbolic ritual, but they are not dramatic. To enact our myths and legends is such a way that we see the symbolism and hear the message in our hearts directly - not through sermons, lectures, and explanations. That would be splendid. I'm also in mind to attempt an exposition of the working tools of the wandmaker in Masonic vein. I'll put that on my list of a hundred things to do...

Meanwhile, I have waiting for me on my bench a rowan wand for my dear old friend and return customer Copper Lion, who lives in California, and one wand that needs to be replaced because it blew itself in half. That is an interesting experience I have never had before. If memory serves only one wand before this one ever broke itself and that was a wand that apparently rejected the stone I had put in it as a reservoir. Ebony. Very powerful wood spirit. The one that broke in half is oak, which makes it even odder. Undoubtedly there was a weak point at a knot in one of the more slender areas of the wand, but there is something else going on too because it was adamant about not being repaired. I get the impression the dryad felt the particular design was forced on it, which is an interesting lesson. I feel rather bad though. It isn't as if it is dead, but I shall have to figure out how to properly disenchant it and free the dryad and let it go its way. Never had to do that before. A Wand Funeral Service. Perhaps a Wake. Or possibly we can work together to make her a pocket wand. Hmmm.

(#22) 17 Januarius 6008. Thor's Day.

Here's a howdy-do. I've been so busy writing in my latest Blogg, The Weekly Owl, that I have not been keeping this old journal up at all. Not much has changed around the shop, though last Fall I personally made the extraordinary journey through the Scottish Rite degrees of Masonry. I suspect that many masons who take the higher degrees do not get a whole lot out of them. They have a certain "wow!" value for everyone, I suspect, as they are very dramatic. On the other hand, it is a particular sort of theater, ritual drama and allegory which is an aquired taste to some extent. But acquiring that taste and developing it inwardly is, for me, what Freemasonry is all about. My own experience was amplified by the fact that I have spent many years studying esoterica and comparative religion. So, for example, if a degree dealt with the Egyptian pantheon or the myth of Osiris, or if another dealt with Mazdaism, I had a reference point and some degree of familiarity with the material. I am sure not all of my brothers in the class had this context and familiarity.

That does not mean that it was all old hat to me. By no means. It was a completely new learning experience to be presented with lessons given as dramatic plays, and in those cases where I was principal candidate and was permitted to take part in the drama more directly, it was a marvlously moving experience. Again, I wonder if I brought particular training and imagination to these rituals. All of the candidates looked honored and serious to be principals in their turn, but one can never see into the hearts and minds of others -- at least not with any certainty. I was able to abandon myself to the role of candidate and accept as real the ceremony of knighthood, for example. This is because I respect symbolism and allegory as one form of reality, one form of truth. Each degree symbolically initates you into an order of knights or of princes or various other titles as if these chapters, councils, and preceptories all existed as organizations, as if they had their meetings regularly, their officers and customs, and their garb, and their recognition signs, and met to conduct business in a particular realm of moral action. For example, say, an order of knights pledged to defend the weak against those in power who abused their power for gain. Or an order like the Templars, pledged to help pilgrims on their way to the temple of Solomon, which is to say, others on the quet for Light and wisdom.

After 32 degrees, one has accumulated a great number of titles, many of which mean absolutely nothing to the uninitiated ear. I take these titles seriously as real and sober titles that symbolize, not so much honors as duties to which I pledged myself. Not all members of the Scottish Rite take it that way. Probably just as well. Those brothers who go through the one-day Scottish Rite program (called a reunion) only take about five or six of the degrees, which means they only see five or six of the mystery plays, rather like skipping scenes in a play. Imagine watching a Reader's Digest Condensed version of King Lear or Macbeth that included only the opening scene, the closing scene and the closing scene of each act. Would you understand the play? You might come away feeling that you had witnessed something moving and great, that the language and poetry were astonishing, but you might be inclined to shrug it off and say, "King Lear's okay, but it doesn't amount to much really." I get that feeling from a few of my brothers. They don't seem to have understood, much less deeply felt the process of transformation that is initation. They have not spend weeks on end being exposed to the process, so they hardly can be expected to undergo the inner transformation. At its base, the Scottish Rite is all about initiation and self-transformation through reflection, and that is really very magical. So, understanding how magic works helps one go through that process as I beleive it was intended to be.

I have had a spate of orders recently and need to devote more hours per day to carving. Something must be in the air bringing out the hawthorn and rowan energies as these are the woods that I'm getting mostly. It's nice to think that I can get some credit cards paid off! Avalon Center has gone dormant and I cannot seem to get the governors to look at their calendars and meet. So its future is uncertain, as the magic eight ball would say. However, I have made good progress on my Wandlore book and hope to have it ready to send to the publishers within a month. Cross your fingers!

More Anon...

You are laid under a binding geas to ask permission before quoting material from this web site. I mean it. You don't want to break out in boils, do you? I didn't think so.

Bard Woodcrafts Wandery

Makers of Fine Druid Wands

Alferian Gwydion MacLir, Wandmaker

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