On Practice

Daily Practice

Regular commitments help you remember and recommit to the path. A little bit every day is useful for anything you’re trying to learn or center in your life.

Open space for the Divine

The Landweird is veiled to us – it dwells in the forests, in the furrows, in the fields, in the fens; and it dwells in lore-hoards, books, scraps of poetry and song. The Practices get us to encounter these things more often, in an engaged and mindful way. Through them, we approach the Landweird more nearly. Seek the Landweird

If our faith was to be summed in a single phrase, it is this. We are Seekers of the Landweird. We hope to understand it more fully, perceive it more clearly, and wake the sleepers once again from the land. The Three Practices are ways to start looking.

The Three Practices stand in place of daily meditation and prayer in other religions – although you can, ultimately, do these as well. In our case, sitting in stillness + clearing the mind is anathema to our craft: the Landweird is in the immensity of life, and in our immersion in it, and in our cultural debris – not minimalist, white or empty, but joyously cluttered. While there are ceremonial elements to our craft where an empty mind is useful, most of our work requires the opposite – a full immersion in the sensory, emotional and tactile qualities of the place we are going.

Teach our Values

Fencraft is fairly light on rules, but the Practices help us impart some of the values we do have – for example, immanence, being aware of the Land, the importance of memory, and of collage, and of mental clutter and so forth. I am constantly finding new lessons in my Practices. The decisions I have made and the pathways I have followed are constantly being honed by things I’ve Read or experienced on Walks.

Confer rights

As a new Pagan, it can feel intimidating to approach the divine without some kind of introduction. Being active in the Solar practice can act as a kind of purification, permission, and authority to approach Solar spirits – and so forth. We try and avoid terms like “clean”; Solar practices lead us to Solar places, ways of being, experiences, ways of thinking, and get us gradually to the same shimmer where Solar entities are. It powerfully communicates both your commitment, with the Practices as a kind of journey you took to reach them, and often confers favour, as you have been doing the kinds of things which express Solar values.

Doing & Being, not Believing

We do not need faith, for that which we revere is present all around us: the world and its weird. Most Pagan paths are lax on rules and doctrine: we understand through experience.

Official Uncertainty

The Fencraft leadership is “officially uncertain” about the nature of spirits, the Land, the afterlife and how it all fits together. We are united by common experiences, not common beliefs or theories. Everyone who walks our path comes to understand part of the Mystery. The Practices are your time to explore and seek.

Oath-Practice

Most of our mythic lore places a very strong emphasis on doing what you said you would do. Keeping your word – or breaking it – is a common feature in legends and fairy stories. Making Practice commitments, and seeing them through, is training for when you have important taboos and promises to keep.

Practicing ritual skills

Acts like meditation, ritual, conceptual work and prayer are built on top of the Practices. They are bedrock. They are the gold-hoard your mind will draw for in worship and spellwork.

All religious traditions have a “goal”, and the daily practice we choose should get us closer to it. We don’t do daily meditation as a beginning practice for Seekers, unlike most new age traditions. Partly, this is because I have spent a decade getting “stuck” at the “Week 1: Meditate Every Day” stage of whatever trad I’ve joined. The “goal” of meditation is, ultimately, keep your mind clear and your energy uncluttered – which is useful for certain kinds of magic; so we reintroduce it to Fencraft when (and if) you start doing that. We like a bit of clutter. Instead, the Three Practices we have chosen for beginners are those which gradually train you how to enter states of landtrance.

Accessibility

Even if you rewrite all other parts of the faith, or are too busy for them – if you keep up the three Practices, and you will be continuing the core of the faith. Other Paganisms and Occult traditions are often high-commitment, high-intensity hobbies, demanding a lot of ritual activity and study. We wanted the core of Fencraft to be as accessible as Christianity is – a book you can read, a sermon you can listen to, some daily values to embody. Not everyone has the energy or inclination to be their own priest to the extent Solitary Witchcraft or occult study demands, and that’s fine. The Three Practices are flexible, low-energy, and easy to wind into everyday life.

How To Practice

One cannot really succeed or fail at the Practices – do not make them a stick to beat yourself or others with.

Each Practice has several variants, so experiment and notice which ones seem most maintanable and effective for you. Habit is the key to success. Set a regular target, such as doing five minutes every day, or an hour on Sunday morning. When you begin, start with one Practice at a time. Once it becomes part of your life, start another. At times, you may wish to focus on one of the Three Practices over the others. You may also want to make short periods in which you make a very serious commitment to a particular Practice, to deepen its impact.

Use whatever habit building techniques work for you:

• Setting a regular commitment and using a timetable or tick chart
• Don’t set a goal you can’t meet. I will walk home from work every day is a good for a devotional week, but won’t stick as a new practice. Try once a week on Thursday
• Periodic challenges (I will bake all my bread this month) can keep you challenged and provide greater insight

The Practices express deeper truths in Fencraft, so consider meditating on their purpose or meaning occasionally. However, it’s usually best to just enter into what you are doing and experience it. The secrets of Walks are learned by Walking.

It can be effective mix up positive, negative and passive practices:

• Positive practices you do something new: I am learning a line of poetry each day
• In negative practices, you commit not to do a thing: I no longer drive home from work
• Passive practices tick on in the background: I no longer have the web at home

Or to mix up daily, weekly, and monthly:

• I read a bit of my book every day
• I go for a walk once a week
• This month, I’m trying to eat only seasonal, local produce

This prevents practice becoming repetitive, or an overwhelming daily commitment that’s easy to fail. Your local tradition might have a weekly “holy night” – in Wales it is Wednesday, in the Channel Islands it’s Friday, in Christianity it’s Sunday and so forth. I’ve found that choosing one morning per week has been very effective.

Accessibility

Plan around your life. Pick targets you can meet: if you are a working parent, then five minutes outside at breakfast might be the most sustainable and nourishing Walk you can do. Living alone in a cabin off grid is not “better” or “more spiritual”. We reject such terms. You can’t get better at being. You can only be.

We consider living off grid, and spending one hour a day with your phone off, of equal spiritual worth – so long as they are a bit of a challenge, mindfully attempted. Hiking the Ridgeway is as good as walking to the shops and back. If you are very agorophobic, like me, then it is just as good to sit on the porch for five minutes. It is the act & intention, not the result.

The Practices can easily be expanded or contracted to respond to what’s happening or changing needs. Doing a little bit of all three every week, preferably every day, is ideal.

Checking the reading list

Throughout this website, each topic has an associated Reading List: artwork which explains more vividly, elegantly or intuitively what I am talking about; and a Commonplace Book – quotes and images doing the same thing. Whenever you study a topic, check out the Reading List.

The initial purpose of the List was to speed up my ability to share the faith. A faith needs music, imagery and words. I am tolerable at all three, but still inadequate to the challenge of depicting the power of the land as I experience it. So the List draws in artworks which express what I’m trying to say better than I ever could, allowing me to focus on clear technical writing – and spending time with my own practice.

But it’s also part of the Landweird: the deep presence in popular culture. Fencraft is not exclusively a recieved tradition that has come to me, or a pagan tradition – the Landweird has been felt by a great many people, some of them story-tellers, many from other faiths or none. We choose to approach these ideas as a spirituality – but there are many people on our frequency for whom it is merely a hobby, entertainment or a source of beauty, and this is excellent.

Finally, the Reading List is part of “ritual for pleasure”. Occult traditions far too often emphasise that magic is Work, with goals which are Very Serious, and techniques which must be Precicely Executed. I’ve always found this a deterrent to both practice and experimentation. Magic is not just within the circle, but throughout life; and so the ability to kick back with a book or some music in a low-stakes way increases how often you are reflecting on the divine.

Time to begin!

Return to the index page and start your first challenge: Walking.