Druidry is renowned for its lack of dogma and an inclusiveness of those who wish to practice it. This means that any account of my own path of Druidry, the things that have influenced me the most, and the aspects of the practice that resonate the deepest will differ maybe from many others on the path. It is important therefore, as a reader who perhaps knows very little about modern Druidry, to keep an open mind about how Druidry may benefit you. My path may not be your path! Indeed, it never can be. I offer insights into what it could mean for you and what its deepest purpose is, in my opinion.
This inclusiveness and freedom to find one’s own path is in fact a central tenet of Druidry; what we have in common is we have a shared love of the natural world and we gain insight to a greater or lesser degree from the natural world. Yet even that ranges significantly between those who follow a shamanic path and those who do not, or when talking about Gods and Goddesses, there are those who worship and recognise multiple divinities and those who do not… you see, I am already beginning to tie myself in knots about what Druidry is and what it isn’t to those who pertain to be on this path.
I shall retrace my steps and tell you about what it was that drew me to begin my studies.
I have been a prehistoric archaeologist of northern Europe for many years, having studied it at university. I went on to be a field archaeologist and later a heritage educator. This academic knowledge taught me one glaring thing: modern assumptions about pre-Roman and pre-Christian faiths is sketchy at best, post-imperial in nature, and post-colonial in attitude to our forebears. After many years of suppressing a strong urge to put magic into dry and logical site reports, I decided that I needed to find out for myself the truth (or as close to it as I could get) about what really was going on in indigenous British spiritual culture and, most pressing for me as a seeker myself, if anything remained and what relevance it has in today’s world in crisis.
The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD) was the Order within which I decided to study (others exist) because I was suitably convinced their archaeological and historical research was sound and that I wasn’t going to be fed a pile of nonsense about the true lineage of what had gone before. This honesty was critical for me, for what I truly needed was authenticity; my hands were stained with the dirt of the land from ancient times and I knew that the unbroken line of humans was asking me to find the truth of our own indigenous wisdom, and critically, to bring it into relevance in the modern world somehow.
The course is divided up into three Grades: Bard, Ovate, and Druid.
The Bardic Grade is all about discovering the myths and legends of this land, the deeper indigenous knowledge still available to us and how we as individuals can access our own creativity. The Ovate Grade is named after Vates, which were ‘inspired or possessed’ healers, seers and had knowledge of medicines. The final Grade of Druid looks at wisdom, becoming of service to the world and the deeper mysteries.
I studied for five years, learning some exquisite, life changing knowledge. Five years was enough to gain a strong understanding of the truths of Druidry and apply them to my own understanding of the world and my place in it, yet I am well aware that I should and will return to the course, perhaps many times in my lifetime to gain deeper and deeper knowledge. The sheer volume of the teachings is astounding.
To begin at the beginning: The Bardic Grade teaches us that the world around us is filled with myth and meaning. It teaches us how to connect to the stories we already have, and how to listen to the living world, for it is telling us truths all the time. This Grade begins to open up the eyes and ears of the Initiate, in order for them to glean wisdom; we are all weavers of our own and with this newly found ability to see the weaving of truths we can begin to make sense of what is out there. The Bardic Grade asks us to look deeper at our own relationship with the living world; how are we right now in our relationship to the land? What about our lifestyle choices, our use and misuse of the abundance of the Earth? In this time, I began to write in earnest, creating my own blog, www.nwyfre.com and began sumi-e pen drawing, a Japanese form of nature art.
The Ovate Grade concentrates on developing practical knowledge of plants and healing modalities, such as movement, meditation, herbalism and other therapeutic arts. At the time of studying this Grade I was also undertaking ecotherapy training, where the living world is incorporated into the therapeutic triangle so that the client can receive direct messages, healing, and teachings from the Earth itself. This work sat perfectly within the Ovate Grade and its message of healing. This Grade also taught about divination, how to become a Reader of Ogham and other divination techniques. For me, I had already begun a study of the Elder Futhark Runes and they still are one of my most used divination tools. This Grade taught me the deeper truths of the Web of Nwyfre, all around us, connecting us all. In Star Wars this was called The Force. In Yoga we call it Prana, in Oriental arts it is Chi. Ancient wisdom of the West and East began to be mingled and co-supportive in this Grade.
I then went on to Initiate into the Druid Grade. This Grade concentrates mostly on the deepest mysteries of all, which are not secret, but precious, therefore not readily shared. The teachings prepare the Initiate to step into service, which can take on many forms. For me, I undertook Yoga teacher training and now teach frequently. I must say I sprinkle a good deal of Druidic and shamanic earth-wisdom principles into my classes as well as traditional Yoga! I am a mentor for Bards and am a celebrant, in order to be of real service in ceremonies. I also studied further as a ritualist as I was beginning to realise that we as a western culture need to make it far more normal to have rituals at many more meaningful moments of our lives, not just weddings and funerals. By this, I mean that in life we transition from one state of being to another very often, sometimes smoothly and sometimes abruptly, joyfully or painfully. These transitions would have once been deeply significant and recognised as important to the individual by the community. Transitions such as the birth of a child, illness, puberty and menopause, surgery, rages and joys, divorce, and others.
I would say that now we need another form of ritual, and that is the ritual of acknowledging the wounds of our land. We witness destruction so frequently now, that if we are away from a place for only a month or so, we see new changes. By this I mean the toppling of a tree for a car park, netting of hedges to stop birds nesting, new buildings, flood water changing the route of a river, and the building of more factories. I work closely with a charity which does just this work, Radical Joy for Hard Times, and I think that this work is one of the most significant ways my Druidic service manifests in the world right now.
Some Druids are pantheistic, and some are atheist. Personally, I see the Goddess in the land, and I call Her energy Bridget. I acknowledge that some may see that as an anthropomorphic creation of the energies of the Earth, manifest in my imagination in human form, in order to comprehend it better. Perhaps, I would say. Yet I have been in conversation with Her, being told to do things which have come true, told to go and stand as protectress of the land, exactly where She told me to go. And (as if by magic) there was something I needed to do in that place. I have led rituals where Her energy can be seen weaving in and out of the participants, guiding them, holding them, bringing us all close to tears as we step into Her service.
In the pre-Christian period, Druidry was taught for nineteen years to an Initiate; they would go through many ordeals of endurance and learning in order to heighten their awareness of the more-than-human world. Today, no such ordeals are asked of Initiates, yet the inference is there in the texts given to us to study. How deep do you need to go in understanding the Mysteries? How long do you need to study? Do you ever stop learning? OBOD teaches in a very safe way, offering many camps and retreats alongside the course, with rituals and ceremonies eight times a year at relatively well scattered Groves and Seed Groups. Of course, not all Druids participate in group activities, preferring to work alone. I enjoy the occasional group ceremony but most of the deepest group work I have undertaken has been alone or in Sisterhood Circles and drumming circles, of a much wilder nature than the scripted Groves! Not to say there isn’t a place for scripts and process, it just doesn’t sit well with me much of the time. Perhaps I am a rebel at heart, which is why Druidry fits well with me! I am who I am and my sense of Service is deeply intuitive; I am not a conformer by nature. Many of us are not, I would suggest.
The Path goes on; right now, I am studying the Tarot, something that is utterly new to me. I am learning about it as a psychological and transformational tool, rather than divination, which, again, sits very well with me and how I see my role as Druid and the service to which I am called. I am still deepening my understanding of herbs and shamanic medicine, journeying and soul work. I need to learn about the Kabbalah and delve deeper into the western Mystery Traditions which hold a strong fascination for me. The path will never end and I know that I know so little!
This realisation brings me back to the question of service. To what end is all this? Why study Earth-wisdom teachings, Western mysteries, our indigenous wisdom at all? What good does it do, for us right now? Essentially, what relevance can my learning possibly have to our current human experience? We are in the throes of global catastrophes that would have been unfathomable to our forebears in scale and magnitude. We are entering a mass extinction of all species on this planet, including ourselves. The oceans are acidifying, the lungs of this planet are being depleted for political gain, pollution of aquifers and the land is rife, fires rage incessantly, rivers drown the land and re-write our world, fossil fuels are continuously extracted and burned, ice sheets are melting, and the climate is fast destabilising everywhere. Nowhere is safe from current or impending disaster and we see inaction, paralysis and downright ignoring happening by our leaders. So, what in this good world is the use of Druidry? I have given this much thought and indeed, much of my ecotherapeutic writing on www.nwyfre.com asks this question. This is what I would say:
People are awakening to the climate crisis and taking to the streets demanding change. This is a radical awakening, yet worrying in some ways because it feels to me as if people are missing out a very critical first step of service: service cannot be motivated by panic, anger, fear, and rage and expect to survive long before burnout, disappointment and inertia set in. It can only be motivated by love. Love can only happen when we have done what I call ‘ecotherapy level one’ which is the deepening into falling in love with the world. All of it. The wounds, the wet, the snow, the sun, the golden harvest as well as the cold dank of mid-winter. It may take years to truly achieve that true connection to our living world, to the point where our hearts are ripped open with a love so pure and divine as to break us in two with the pain of it. Only when this has occurred are we ready for ‘ecotherapy level two’. By this I mean stepping into service. The service of speaking truth to power, having the difficult but necessary conversations about devastating ecocide all around us, fossil fuels and plastic, how we treat our elderly relatives, animals, races, and nations, and how we treat our youth. Only then – when we are totally and desperately in love with this divine planet and realise our place as its servants – will we be ready to step onto the picket line, shout with our hearts as one, and look to ourselves to see where we as individuals, and as a tribe, fit in all of this. Only then can we look into our open souls and see what we were really put on this planet for. Why are we here? What is being asked of me right now and how can I do this magical work that only I can?
My deepest Druidic service is to hold others as they awaken.
Druidry is both ecotherapy level one and level two and it can be revisited again and again and again, as many times as we as human and we as the collective soul need. So, when someone asks me what it’s all about, I sit knowing that I have been ripped open and sewn back together again, I have tasted the three drops of Awen and been transfigured over and over into this current form. I sit within the Web of Nwyfre, weaving, weaving and holding those who would come to know their own place in the Web. Then I send them all out into the world, themselves ready and in love, ready to become of service in their own ways to the Goddess and what She really represents; the Earth.
Perhaps this is enough to turn planetary destruction around. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it will help us build a new, ancient truth about ourselves, if we survive. One that helps us remember our place in the Web of it all, coming down onto the dirty ground, into the tomb, up the tree canopy and under the river to where the non-humans have always lived, beyond us, around us, in plain sight, teaching us their truths for all this time. Druidry has given me the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Perhaps it can work its magic on you too.
[Harriet writes a blog www.nwyfre.com and is on the Board of Directors for the charity Radical Joy for Hard Times which can be found in this link: www.radicaljoy.org.