It is unfortunate that many who aspire toward what is termed Traditional Craft see it as being a means of material acquisition or domination over an external.
“What can I gain if..?” and “I can have power over…. if I….”
Rarely do I hear the likes of;
“This process had revealed ……. about my nature..” or
“This working shall enable me to overcome this shortcoming in my persona”.
‘Soap-boxes’ are ever fashionable, here I climb on mine…
People bewail the tyrannies of a materialistic/capitalist system…. just after they have attempted their umpteenth ‘money spell’ or have just bought their latest deluxe cloth bound edition of a fleeting text.
Folks cry aloud at the atrocities of war….. once they have put down the poppet or blackthorn rod ‘cursing’ their troublesome colleague.
Worldviews are held so long as they confirm one’s personal agenda.
Therein lies the crux of the matter.
Persona and its agenda are temperamental, they shift according changing environments and circumstance. As one accumulates or loses throughout life, wants and needs of the individual change accordingly and so does the paradigm one accepts which will confirm the ‘rightness’ of one’s ensuing desires and aspirations. Persona isn’t permanent, how many times have we heard “I’m a different person now.” or “This is the new me”. Yet we are enamoured by the temporal wants and reinforcements of ‘who we are’ and try and grasp them as frozen stills in Time. Constantly one tries to emphasise ‘this is who I am’ through what they acquire in life. More truthfully I believe the statement should be ‘this is what I think I am at this moment’. It is the illusion of separation that lies at the root of unbridled domination and exhaustion of resource, each ‘part’ wanting more than and be ‘better’ than the next.
The deeper one delves into one’s Craft the more one loses themselves. The more one discovers about their environment, their motives, their wants – the more one realises that they indeed are not held by or solely identified by such transient things. At the core, when all dross and distraction is filtered away, we discover that we are Timeless, we are eternal, we are that which has always been and will always be, that which finds itself in All.
Only then, at that experiential realisation that All is in All, will Truth be known and the round of Life trod accordingly.
For what does one truly craft throughout life if it is not the discovery of One-Self?
Flags, Flax & Fodder,
Gestumblindi
Man of Goda 