Savanah's Year

We just finished our first official lesson with Savanah for her "Year of Druidry," and I'd decided previously that I wanted to try to take notes and keep a record of how things go. So here goes.

She seemed both excited and a bit intimidated, though she brightened up when I told her she would be allowed to light the candle at the beginning of every lesson (a red pillar candle that we'll leave burning during each lesson — the red and the fire both seem appropriately symbolic of the fiery, passionate energy of puberty and adolescence that she'll be entering). We began today's lesson by talking a bit about her Tarot Deck, our gift to her for her twelfth birthday a couple weeks ago. Along with the deck, we gave her three "assignments" to complete before her next weekend with us: pick out her favorite card, pick out her least favorite card, and pick a card that represents "what she wants to be when she grows up." Then spend some time journaling about the reasons for each of her choices.

I think it's appropriate to keep her choices private, so I won't discuss them here. But it was quite surprising what she chose and I may want to do some meditation on her choices over the next week (or month, or year) to explore some of their potential meaning. What was most obvious was that she chose cards based on who the figures reminder her of in her own life. One card reminded her a a friend's mother, another because it reminded her of Jeff.

One thing I have realized is that working with a girl Savanah's age, I may need to get more creative (and more literal, or specific?) in the kinds of questions I ask. Jeff participated in this lesson with us, and he seemed very good at asking Savanah questions that got her thinking or responding (whereas once or twice, I actually accidentally interrupted her, not realizing she was done with her response). I tried to ask questions such as, "What about the card do you like?" But that question seemed too broad and she would struggle to answer. Jeff would ask questions like, "Is the figure alone, or with people? What do you think the person in the card is thinking about? What is important to that person?" Sometimes these questions got "I don't know" responses, but more often Savanah seemed to know or at least have an idea or a guess. This strikes me as very interesting — almost as though, at her age, she still doesn't have as much self-awareness as she has awareness of others. One of our goals with this year of work is to help her foster some self-awareness, to cultivate her inner life so that she can seek that foundation as she gets older and has more independent interaction with peers. I have a feeling this will be a challenge for Savanah the way it might not be for some of the other kids.

After discussing the Tarot cards, we used the suits as a jumping off point to talk about the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. We were able to point out how we used each of these elements in our Samhain family ritual last night — a candle for fire, a bowl of water, incense for air and bird seed for earth. I talked a bit about the elements as being "building blocks" that make up the world we live in, and how we can use them as symbols for things that might be more difficult to pin down when we want to prayer, meditate, do ritual or magic or talk to our gods. Cu Gwyn, who was prowling around during the lesson, became an example of how we might symbolize his playful, energetic personality with "fire" and so choose a candle to represent him in a prayer or ritual. We did some brief discussion about the basic correspondences, and then I gave her a word matching exercise, with a list of about thirty words (directions, seasons, times of day, colors, animals, etc.) to match up each with one of the four elements.

We then very briefly talked about the three "Druidic elements," or as I like to call them, the three aspects or qualities: calas, gwyar and nwyfre. We talked a bit about how they matched up with the three realms of land, sea and sky (which she figured out based on the literal translations of the Welsh words), and then some other qualities that might match up well with each. We gave her a similar word-matching exercise to do for the three aspects.

Although she may not get all of the correspondences right just by guessing (and using her Tarot deck to look for hints in the imagery and symbolism), hopefully it will get her thinking in the right way about how the elements and aspects function as symbols or paths of the sacred. Also, it gives her a very basic starting place for how the year of study will be organized (we'll be devoting one month to each aspect of each element — so, f'ex, month one will be calas of earth, month two will be gwyar of earth, month three nwyfre of earth, then calas, gwyar and nwyfre of water, etc.). She doesn't have to have the correspondences memorized right now, because she'll be growing familiar with them as the year goes on, but it will give her some simple "tools," a framework in which to organize the following lessons. That's the hope anyway.

Next week's lesson, we'll start with Calas of Earth, taking a month to look at the foundations of Druidry expressed through an awareness of the sacredness of physical forms (spending a week each on the natural world, our own bodies, our home and living space, etc.). I hope to spend some time in meditation and preparation before next week's lesson, instead of feeling rushed like I did this week. Hopefully I'll be able to do some simple divination as well.