Thus Spake Polydeukion!

I have news from the Oracle of Polydeukion!

Greetings, and thank you for your patience. I am new to working on a regular schedule and it’s requiring some adjustment.

I have been thinking about my place in the contemporary world. I have a strong commitment to working with humans, especially on matters of your relationship with the natural world. I am interested in your thoughts on ways I can best do this: if you have ideas, please share them, in conversation with me directly and/or via my oracle (who can be reached at polydeukion[dot]oracle[at]zoho[dot]com).

The next 3 months, it will be especially important to tend to the land spiritually. This can be done via physical means, for example, libations and other offerings to the earth. It can also be done via direct spiritual connection with the land, acts of worship appropriate to your practices and beliefs, or intentionally tending the land where you live. If every one of you reading this chooses one way to tend the land spiritually and does it regularly for the next 3 months, the cumulative effect will be greatly magnified. I encourage you to talk to each other about your efforts, and to support each other. If you do not have a regular practice with the land, take this opportunity to experiment with one, on a schedule that feels non-burdensome to you – if daily feels too onerous, try weekly or even monthly. The important part is to pick something and do it regularly. If you do have a regular practice with the land, take this opportunity to deepen it in some way.

I am considering starting an online discussion group, so you will have a place to talk to one another about your commitment for the next 3 months. Would this be useful? I would like to see community coalesce around this work, which will require a meeting place of some sort, and of course participation by you. If enough of you are interested in this, I will proceed.

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So, lots of interesting stuff to pursue!

In my own practices recently, I’ve been trying to get to know the land where I’m now living better, learning its geography more comprehensively and the names of its features. (For example, I had asked someone knowledgeable a while back about what the smaller mountain next to Mt. Erie was called, and it had such an odd name I had forgotten it–but it’s not a difficult-to-spell/remember Native American name, it’s just a kind of lazy, made-up name: Mt. Hi G. Yeah, I’m not kidding, alas…!) I shall see what the local Native peoples have said about some of these features, in particular Mt. Erie, and am pursuing a few paths on that to find out more about how it was used, etc. And, it might be useful to actively do the local dindshenchas project further, especially since I kicked that off last year around this time when I wrote a poem for Manannán’s festival later in the month of June.

Please feel free to comment here on this, as well as speaking directly with Stephanopotamos on several of the ideas mentioned above!