Wisdom

(ADF) Wisdom: good judgement, the ability to perceive people and situations correctly, deliberate about and decide on the correct response.

(DEF) The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment

To me wisdom is in essence the application of learned knowledge and experience.  It is our attempt to solve the problems of today with the experiences and lessons of yesterday.  Thus it is never a current moment item.  It is an application of the past with outcomes in the future.  I feel that to be truly wise, is to live each moment, embracing life and learning something from it, and governing our decisions with the knowledge that our decisions will impact the future.  This broadens our personal experience and better enables us to apply the knowledge that we have learned, and take the time to weigh our decisions.  But by the same token, as you go through life do not fear making mistakes.  The greatest teacher sometimes is when we are wrong.  In many ways wisdom is the willingness to learn from our failures as much as our triumphs, and the key to wisdom is the ability to say… “I don’t know, but I am going to find out”

Piety

(ADF) Piety: correct observance of ritual and social traditions; the maintenance of agreements both personal and societal that we humans have with the Gods and Spirits.  Keeping the Old Ways, through ceremony and duty.

(DEF) “Devoutly religious”. 

In religion as with all endeavours, a certain amount of commitment is required if you wish to reap anything from it.  It is a partnership between you the worshipper and the Kindreds.  Piety is the inner promise we make to not only honour the Kindreds, but to learn, grow, understand, and share in our, and of our religion.  However this devotion must always be moderated by our sense of scepticism.  Following anything blindly, I believe is as bad as not following anything, even our own beliefs.  As such we must always be willing to challenge our beliefs, and ideals so that they grow along with us.  In all the world’s history no one thing has been exploited more to bad ends than religion.  People in general want the easy fix and are willing to follow it blindly, sacrifice their personal, spiritual, and physical selves to others to get it.  In that case piety becomes slavery.  Piety is the pursuit and dedication in following a path, coupled with the integrity and courage to question it.  I feel piety is also belief.  Believing that the Gods, the Spirits, and the ancestors are there, and that we can connect with them.  

Vision

(ADF) Vision: the ability to broaden one’s perspective to have a greater understanding of our place / role in the cosmos, relating to the past, present, and future.

(DEF) The faculty or state of being able to see, or the faculty of being able to imagine.

Vision is the sense of sight or in spiritual terms it could refer to an experience that conveys a revelation.  In either case vision refers to our ability to see things.  It can mean our ability to see what we want from life, religion, or our path in life, and by doing so enable us to create the path that will get us there.  In this way vision is like a goal or a dream we have.  It creates an image in our minds and hearts that solidifies our hopes and desires, making them tangible or real to us. In the case of revelation it allows us to go beyond the information at hand and perhaps using our higher selves make the connections with the kindreds or come to understand them in a manner that we could not through more mundane methods.

Courage

(ADF) Courage: the ability to act appropriately in the face of adversity.

(DEF) “Intrepidity, dauntlessness, hardihood”.  

Courage can come in the form of physical courage, such as the ability to stand up against pain, hardship or even death in order to accomplish our goals.  Or it may be moral courage; our ability to apply right action or thinking, despite opposition, even if that opposition leads us to become unpopular in public opinion.  It holds especially true in our ability to not be daunted by our own fears and shortcomings.  These can be more challenging than anything society can put against us.  Our ability to confront negative situations such as fear, intimidation, or uncertainty even when we feel that we are too weak, or incapable to effect change is our ability to manifest courage.

Integrity

(ADF) Integrity: Honor; being true to one’s self and to others, involving oath-keeping, honesty, fairness, respect and self-confidence.

(DEF) The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

Integrity it the promise you make with yourself.  It is our ability to consistently act in a manner that reflects high moral standards, principals, or values.  It enables us to act in an honest and straightforward manner.  To have integrity requires us to take this set of moral codes or values inside us and live through them.  It is facing the world each day and the people around you in a fair and honourable way while consistently committing to our spiritual, or social obligations without compromise.  It is our ability to fulfill our commitments despite the problems, to act justly and not take short cuts, to refuse to malign another or allow other s to do so despite the potential for personal gain. Integrity allows us to understand that advancement or benefit attained at the cost of another cheapens us.

Perseverance

(ADF) Perseverance: Drive; the motivation to pursue goals even when that goal becomes difficult.

(DEF) Steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success

Perseverance is our ability to continue when everything around us tells us to quit.  It is a method of attaining the impossible despite obstacles.  But this method needs a couple of tools to function, three tools in fact.  I call them the 3 D’s.

Decision.  Drive.  Discipline.

These are what make up perseverance.  Decision is what sets us on the path in the first place.  We decided to do something, to follow a certain path, and we accepted that it will have challenges.  Next we employ drive to move us forward and discipline to stay the course.  We bend our minds and our wills to the task so that when we do come up upon one of these challenges we face it and do not let it daunt us.  Perseverance is our ability to not give up on either ourselves or our dreams despite what life may throw at us.

Hospitality

(ADF) Hospitality: Acting as both gracious host and appreciative guest, involving benevolence, friendliness, humor, and the honouring of a gift for a gift.

(DEF) The friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

Someone once said that hospitality is treating others, as you would like to be treated.  I believe that it is treating them better than that.  To treat everyone, the ones you know and the ones you don’t, as you would your dearest friends.  It is finding a way to let go of all the baggage that society heaps upon us and be free to express ourselves in a friendly caring manner.  I feel that the root of true hospitality is caring.  We need to care about people and the world around us and make a very deep meaningful connection.  Then we can be hospitable.  It is our ability to give and to receive from that connection.  So in many ways hospitality is when we enter into a symbiotic relationship with the world, the people, or the Kindreds.  We give so that we nourish that relationship and it nourishes us… ghosti.

Moderation

(ADF) Moderation: Cultivating one’s appetites so that one is neither a slave to them nor driven to ill health (mental or physical) through excess or deficiency. 

(DEF) “To restrain from excess, to temper, lessen or allay.  To not go to extreme”.   

It is said that anything even if it is benevolent in the beginning can turn to vice or have negative outcomes if not taken in moderation.  Therefore moderation is an application of knowing ones self and knowing where to draw the line.  So discipline would be a good word for it.  If it is drink, know how many is too many.  If it is gambling, know what is acceptable and what gets you in trouble.  I also feel that moderation is not only the restricting or restructuring of our own indulgences, but also being responsible to share with others and in the end to be responsible to give something back.  Moderation is all about balance, too little versus too much, what we take versus what we give, what we keep versus what we share.

Fertility

(ADF) Fertility: Bounty of mind, body, and spirit involving creativity and industry, an appreciation of the physical and sensual, nurturing these qualities in others.

(DEF) “Fruitfulness, richness, fertile invention” 

When I first looked at this one it was hard to get away from the first level meaning which carried the sexual overtones of society.  However the much more subtle meaning is one that reaches further, and that is simply to grow.  The ability to grow something whether it is in the soil, in our hearts and minds, or even in our faith.  That is what these virtues do.  They plant seeds within us that if we study, have faith, follow the path, and have the courage to go forward, will grow inside us our entire lives.  Everyone has something they can cultivate.  We plant the seeds, give it the light of our faith, the food of thought, weed out the things that are negative to us, and as it grows it will give us a better us.  As a virtue I think this one is important, but kind of a shadow player.  If you have things like wisdom and knowledge, piety, and the others going on in your life then your mind is a fertile place.  Thoughts and ideas will abound.