(Nimue)
I think it’s increasingly important to be clear about the ’English’ part of my Druidry. I’m not part of a living tradition in the way that some Druids are. I come to this path as a modern person inspired by the past. I am not a reconstructionist. I do not claim that what I do is historically accurate. I’m not personally much invested in the idea of my Englishness, but I still think it needs flagging up.
There are issues around what non-Welsh, non-Scottish and non-Irish modern Pagans do with those traditions. If this is something you want to know more about then your best bet is to find Druids who are deeply involved with those lands and cultures and take on board what they have to say about appropriation and people talking over them and misrepresenting their stuff. I’m not in a position to speak for them.
However, I live in a landscape where Druidry was practiced historically and where revival Druidry took root. I don’t think that being a Druid depends on either your ancestors of blood or your ancestors of place, and that the path should be open to anyone who wants to walk it. We can balance inclusion with respect. We can recognise that some of us come to this with ancestors who were oppressors. Most people, like myself, will have a bit of both.
For me, my relationship with the landscape I live in is the bedrock of my Druidry. My local museum has figures of local Iron Age deities in it, and there are pre-Roman godds associated with this landscape. As I’ve talked about before, there is ‘Welsh’ mythology set in Gloucester, because the borders haven’t always been the same as they are right now. Boudicca was right out in the east of the UK – Celtic peoples were everywhere here, so in the UK we all have that as part of our landscape history.
My local Roman villa was most likely to have been Romano-British, Plenty of ‘Celtic’ people willingly adopted Roman ways of doing things. There are no hard lines between the two cultures, as further evidenced by how the Romans treated local deities, usually associating them with their own and continuing use of the same shrines. People have always been mobile, intermarriage between groups of people has always been a thing. None of us are ‘pure’ anything and notions of purity underpin a lot of fascist thinking so it’s important to take that into account.
You can be a Druid on your own terms. All you have to do is be respectful of people who may have closer and deeper ties with landscapes and deities than you do. If your personal experience of a deity makes you feel entitled to talk over or argue with people who belong to that deity’s landscape, history and traditions, take a good, hard look at yourself. Ask why you think you are so special and so important, because trust me, that’s a ‘you’ issue and has nothing to do with the godd in question.
Druid Life 
Well said!
Definitely a worthwile point to consider and think about. I’m out in the East, in Boudicca country, and although my ancestry is definitely not from this area, I make a point to honour the deities and spirits who were honoured here – which includes Celtic, Norse, Roman and more because of the history you mention. I do have concerns sometimes over the amount of Welsh myth and language that has made its way into English Druidry from the Revival tradition, but as I’m not a Welsh Druid I can’t speak with experience here.
There seems to be division around whether using learning Welsh and learning what of the language you can is more respectful, or whether those of us who are not Welsh really shouldn’t be doing that, and I don’t honestly know what the answer is.
I’m not sure really – in my own practice, I tend to avoid the Welsh stuff but I also know Welsh Druids who love to see more people learning and using their language and myth, so it’s complicated. I think the distinction between cultural inspiration and cultural appropriation could be useful here, perhaps.
Very much agreed.
This is a rant.
Is it, though? Because if you have any specific points you’d like to discuss, I’m open to that, but this is hardly an insightful critique.
yes, unfortunately it is. The last paragraph is a thinly-disguised attempt to right yet another perceived sleight which you have no doubt been stewing over for some time. Please desist.
No it isn’t. The entire post is a response to a conversation with David Bridger about appropriation issues in Druidry, and how to respond to that, and what would be useful. It’s an attempt to be clear about what I am and what I am not so as not to mislead anyone over my background, and it’s a call to people to think about how they represent themselves and deal with others within the community. As someone outside of Druidry I appreciate that none of this would be clear to you. Best not to bring your projections to my blog, it’s all rater tedious.
there’s actually a sense in the local community that you’ve been getting a bit too big for your boots in recent months. Not saying that’s right. But rightly or wrongly it’s a perception out there.
Coming in with a new fake identity doesn’t make your trolling any more credible. Two out of ten for this one, poor even by your low standards.
The Best Way to be a Druid on Your Own Terms is to be a Solitary Paganistic Druid. Legends say that Merlin practiced Solitarily much of the time.
But if you join a Druid Coven, you have to Conform to their Druidistic Leader’s Expectations or you may very likely end up Cast Out.
I know – I have ended up Cast Out of some Covens for the Pettiest of Reasons!
Group dynamics are always complicated – having run groups as well as being in them, I’ve had mixed experiences, which I think is pretty normal. I think even if you are in a group you need room for a solitary practice as well.
It is probably why our Beloved Bobcat makes mention of such Social Issues in her Book ‘Living With Honor’ where she writes of having had to deal with Awkward Antisocial Behaviors that even she has had to endure.
That is probably why she now Practices her Druidism as a Semi Recluse nowadays.
I worked with her for a while – I think that’s probably how you and I first met. She had a habit of asking far more from people than they could possibly sustain, unfortunately.
I had never seen her asking for too much other than for People to use their Better Senses.
I have. I’ve seen people really struggle to say no to her when they really needed to say no. I ended up badly burned out at one point, and pressured into going to a meeting in London. I could go on. She was passionate and charismatic and not afraid to use that to get things done, but that came at a price.
It is become obvious to me that Bobcat also got Burned Out from that sort of thing and became another reason why she has gone Solitary.
Yes, that seems very likely to me. It wasn’t a healthy situation and it must have been taking a toll on her, too. It’s actually a really common problem in volunteering that there is always more needs doing than there are people to do it, and it isn’t an easy thing to handle well. I’ve run into similar problems in other volunteering contexts.