Local Druidry

(Nimue)

Prompted by a recent comment on the blog I thought it might be interesting to talk about Druidry and community and how that works for me. I was very active during my Midlands period in terms of going to moots, grove meetings and rituals, and then leading moots, meditation sessions and rituals. In the last ten years or so I’ve been involved with a few things locally, but nothing like on that scale.

There are moots I’ve been to a few times, but it’s not something I’ve reliably had the time, energy or transport for. I’ve been to mistletoe rites down by the Severn and had a few years of being involved with the local Druid Camp. There have been intermittent local rituals with various people over the years. The major issue there has been a lack of somewhere suitable – flat, accessible and not so windblown that you have to yell to be heard. Stroud has a lot of windy hills.

For some years I sat with a lovely group of contemplative Druids, meeting every month. That doesn’t happen anymore, and I miss it. Holding a space like that requires a bigger living room than I’ve had, so I wasn’t able to pick it up when the previous organiser needed to let it go. Otherwise, I probably would have done. Aside from that, my major local activity has been making temporary labyrinths for people to walk.

My nearest Druid Grove is in Bristol – which is a long enough journey that it has felt like too much to consider. I know I would be welcome there and I have friends in that Grove, but the distance is an issue.

I am tentatively exploring the possibility of starting something locally, because I’ve found myself in a conversation about it. The singing space I’m running in Gloucester isn’t overtly a Druid thing, but singing seasonally is part of what I do, and enabling people to come together and sing is certainly an expression of my Druidry. 

My local Pagan scene is rather lovely. We aren’t beset by personality clashes, big egos or witch wars. The local scene is supportive, with plenty of mutual respect. I know most of the people who are involved in making things go. I like them, but that doesn’t automatically mean that what they run is what I need. There’s a local Goddess Temple doing all sorts of things – as an example – but that’s not the right space for me. 

Sometimes being part of a community is a compromise, where you fit in as best you can because the need for like-minded people is an issue. Sometimes you get lucky and find that what’s on your doorstep is exactly what you need. Sometimes to get what you need you have to be prepared to run it yourself, which is a lot of work. Communities tend to be fluid as people come and go. Running Pagan spaces as a volunteer is labour intensive so it’s a lot to take on, and a lot to sustain and people can’t always do that for the long haul. 

Changing your everyday practice

(Nimue)

When spiritual people talk about an everyday practice it can sound like you’re supposed to pick a thing and do it forever. This isn’t’t the case. It can be easier if you pick to do the same thing at the same time every day because then you know where it fits in. That doesn’t suit everyone.

If having an everyday practice doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. It’s totally acceptable to show up at the frequency that suits you. The most important question to ask is – what do you need from this? Once a week? Eight festivals a year? It’s all good.

An everyday practice doesn’t have to mean doing exactly the same thing every day. I tend to make a little space for meditation and contemplation and that’s usually on waking or when when settling at night, but not always. What I do varies a lot. I’ve talked about some of the specific things I’ve worked on – like having conversations with my gut inhabitants. Some meditations I visit regularly and these tend to be the ones that help my body relax. The rest of the time I explore and experiment and do things for as long as they make sense to me.

You have to try things to see if they work for you. Small everyday practices can include prayer, taking a moment with your altar, watching the sunrise, movement-based meditations, gratitude, journaling, making affirmations and more. Different times may call for different things. You will also need to try different things to figure out how they work for you.

When you’re new to something it is worth giving it a few weeks to see how you do with it. When starting out with anything it’s reasonable to feel awkward about it, especially if you’re new to having a spiritual practice. You might feel foolish or self-conscious, second guess the point of what you’re doing, worry about not being good enough and other potentially self-sabotaging things. So you have to give yourself long enough to get past that and see how you feel then.

It’s good to re-assess what you’re doing, and to do so regularly. If something has become more routine than ritual, it probably isn’t serving you anymore. If you’ve tried something and after a few weeks you aren’t getting into it then maybe try something else for a while. Think about what results you were expecting to get and whether those were realistic – especially if you were trying to do something more ambitious.

Simply checking in with yourself can be a really good fixed daily practice. Taking a moment to ask ‘how do I feel?’ and ‘what do I need?’ can help guide what you do the rest of the time. Do you need to get out and feel the air on your skin today? Do you need movement or rest? Do you need to soothe your mind or stimulate it? Give yourself permission to be a bit complicated and messy, and let your feelings and inspiration guide you.

Sex and Druidry

(Nimue)

One of the things I very much like about Druidry is that there’s room for everyone. My experience of Druid spaces, and rituals is that assumptions aren’t made about what’s going on for people sexually. I have encountered witchcraft content that has assumed everyone is hetrosexual, and also sexual. I know a lot of queer Druids, and there’s evidently plenty of room in Druidry for asexual folk and people who don’t identify with gender.

My experience of the Druid community is that it’s a mostly sex positive space. People aren’t encouraged to feel uncomfortable about their sexuality or their bodies. Many of the Pagan Godds are sexy and have sexual content in their stories, and quite a bit of that is very much at odds with more restrictive thinking that tends to go with Christianity. Paganism tends to be celebratory, and I’ve found Druids to be no exception.

Sex, after all is part of nature. Human sexuality is complicated, but when you look around at the natural world you’ll see we aren’t alone in that. Gay penguins raising abandoned eggs together are a lovely example. For a long time we didn’t see queerness in nature because we inferred gender from behaviour based on human assumptions about what those behaviours meant. It’s good that progress is being made on that score.

Not being sexual is also perfectly natural and deserves as much respect and inclusion as any other way of being. 

I think at times, modern Paganism has got a bit hung up on ideas of fertility and reproduction. This isn’t inclusive of people who cannot have children, or do not want children and it’s important to keep that in mind alongside any celebrating we might want to do. It’s important that if we intend to celebrate our sexual selves that we’re clear about what’s going to be involved. People who are asexual, and trauma survivors need taking into account. Sexual symbolism and ritual acts have the potential to be distressing, so it’s important participants are able to give informed consent.

Bigots get everywhere of course, and Druid spaces are no exception. No community is free from predators and we have a responsibility to take care of each other and keep each other safe. That means being inclusive. It also means not creating spaces where it is easy for predators to act. The way in which Paganism is sex positive can be capitalised on by predators to cover for inappropriate behaviour. This is why it’s good to build a culture of active consent, even around symbolic activities. If you’re going to make obscene brioche for Beltain,check everyone is comfortable with that! If you feel the need to put an athame in a chalice during a ritual, make sure that symbolism works for everyone and consider alternatives if it doesn’t. 

The more we do to show each other respect and take care of each other, the harder it is for anyone to act abusively.

Magic and Druidry

(Nimue)

David’s recent post on high magic struck me as significant and something I need to respond to. When most people think of Druids – contemporary or historical – what they tend to envisage is the beardy sage in a white robe, doing some involved ritual, probably at Stonehenge. For many people, Druidry conjures up an image of ceremony, formal ritual, tightly written scripts and pageantry. Unlike witchcraft, Druidry doesn’t always carry those same connotations of spellwork, but may well suggest something high brow, through to pretentious.

What attracted me to the idea of Druidry wasn’t that at all. It had everything to do with my own feeling that Druidry and folklore naturally relate to each other. A feeling I evidently have in common with David. I know this is a notion a lot of modern Druids find resonant. Many of us are drawn to earthier takes on Druidry, to activism, simple living, the image of the bard, to a mix of mirth and reverence, and the idea of raising boils with satires. 

I know many Druids who are deeply invested in their particular landscape, history and local traditions. When you’re thinking about ritual on those terms it makes little sense to go all grandiose and verbose. Talking to the dirt, the mud, the fallen leaves, the dead, the rain and other grubby things, there’s no room to be ‘high’. My rituals have always been low to the ground, more celebration than ceremony.

It is interesting to me that the word ‘druid’ has the power to conjure up such radically different ideas for people. As with anything whose truth is uncertain, there’s room in the idea of Druidry for people to make it be whatever they want. So for some, Druids are awful non-Christians practicing human sacrifice and being barbarous at the edge of the Roman empire. For some, Druids are wise and noble proto-Christians. Some see power and politics, usually alongside the mighty beards and pristine white robes. Some see nature worshiping hippies. History has no definitive answers for us in this regard.

Projecting is a very human sort of activity. We bring what we know and what we feel to anything that isn’t clearly defined for us. It happens with all religions. People who want justifications for violence will find that in their sacred texts. People who want to heal the sick and care for the downtrodden will find the inspiration for that in the exact same sacred texts. What we find when we come to religion is often simply a reflection of ourselves, and I have no idea if it’s even possible to go beyond that.

I find my Druidry at the margins and under the sky. I’m drawn to the patches of dirt closest to me, not the idea of a massive sun cult or an ancient order. I’m not orderly by nature. How we do our Druidry is very likely an expression of who we are, and I find I am fine with that. I don’t know that definitive truth does anyone much good spiritually.

Daily Rituals

(Nimue)

David’s recent post prompted me to think about my own daily rituals. Having spent a lot of years on the Druid path, my daily rituals have changed a lot over time. Usually what happens is that I get interested in a particular practice and for a while I explore that intensely and decide what to do with it. There have been times when I’ve had daily prayer practices, daily meditation practices, regular altar-oriented practices and gratitude practices. All of those have evolved over the periods I’ve spent focused on them.

I’d like a living arrangement where I could easily slip outside in the morning and have somewhere quiet and private to stand, and just be present. That’s not feasible at the moment, and I make the best use of the windows that I can. 

Currently I’m exploring a reflective relationship with the everyday details of my life. This is more about responding to my experiences rather than setting up specific actions. I’m making a point of pausing to reflect on things as I’m doing them. It mixes ideas I’ve explored before – slowing down and gratitude, conscious living and reflection. I’m currently bringing those things together in a different way. Part of the reason for this is that life has thrown a lot of new and unfamiliar experiences my way in recent months, and this deliberate slowing down has been needful.

Otherwise I’m flitting around a lot. Sometimes I do very intense and deliberate meditations. Sometimes I do body-healing meditations. I’m doing a lot of unstructured contemplation and window gazing, because I’m not so fraught all the time. I note that being calm is a great enabler of meditation and that meditating to become calm is actually a lot of work. I note that it’s a lot easier to have a spiritual life when your life is better arranged to support your spirituality. If your spiritual practice is a set of coping mechanisms to deal with stress and try to keep moving, it’s not as effective as a spiritual practice.

Working with embodiment has brought me towards relishing as part of how I do my Druidry. It’s an ongoing process of celebrating lived, embodied experience. I pause to relish the flavours of the food. I linger over my tea. I gaze out of the window at the sunlight on the trees while relishing the cool breeze and the bird song. The sun on my skin and the wind in my hair are sensory experiences I make time for. Spending enough time in hugs and snuggly situations where I can take the time to really relish that is part of this, too.

When I go through deliberate phases with things, my aim is to embed something into my life. I don’t always know what I want to have stick. For me, an important aspect of setting out to do spiritual things is to change what I do in the ostensibly more mundane parts of my life. At the moment I’m drawing on a lot of previous explorations to find ways of being more reflective as part of what I do all the time rather than as something I set aside specific time for. It’s all threaded through with experiences of gratitude and joy.

Rituals

(David)

One of my daily magical rituals is my morning shower. This was the ritual today. Its magical structure changes as required, along with the deities and spirits that I address in it, but like my other daily rituals it always takes place in parallel with its related mundane routine.

“Lord, please protect me from any injuries and every sort of harm as I get into and out of this shower and while I’m in there, in Jesus’s name.”

Step into the shower, taking care to avoid slips and falls even on days when my strength is weak and my balance poor, not relying on spiritual protection alone without doing my conscious part.

“Anthony, please find for me the sea-smoothed pebble I brought home from the beach years ago.” I visualise the lovely flat pebble, which I know is somewhere in this house, hidden from me unintentionally since our bedroom was emptied to be decorated, and which I would very much like to take its place on my sea magic altar.

Step forward under the water. “I am cleansing, physically, mentally, and spiritually.”

Shampoo and condition my hair and beard, then wash my body, a thorough process of routine which has grown in sequences of threes and sevens as I am exploring numerology, everything with magical intent as well as for physical cleanliness.

Step forward to rinse off. “I am losing weight. I am shedding pounds of fat. I am eleven stone and I am healthy, happy, and content in my slim, trim body shape. I am eleven stone and I am happy.”

Finish rinsing off. Stand beneath the jet. “I am cleansed, physically, mentally, and physically.”

Grip my magically charged bracelet. “I am strong. I am protected. I am Lion. I am Wolf.” Breathe the presence of my power animal spirits in me, knowing their strength and protection.

Step out of the shower. “Thank you, Lord.”

Towel off in sequences of threes and sevens. Apply oils and creams with magical intent.

Brush my hair and my oiled beard in sequences of sevens.

These deities and spirits I talk to in my shower ritual may well be the subjects of future entries here. They are inheritances of my childhood, of the Christianity into which I was born. I no longer practice that faith, although its personified deities remain present in my world. I’ve experienced many changes of perception and understanding in my long life, and some particularly significant ones in this regard during this past year. There are instinctual lettings-go underway, which I intend to complete with deeper understanding through historical study and spiritual explorations. This might prove to be my biggest recent shift, and the fact that its clearest manifestation occurs during my daily cleansing is not lost on me.

Do you have any rituals? If so, do they continue without change or are they dynamic events. Do any of your rituals ever prove to be vehicles for change in your life?

Children in ritual

Back when I regularly ran rituals in the Midlands (UK) I made a point of including children. If you don’t include children, you exclude their parents and the burden of that falls disproportionately on women. 

It helps that Druid rituals are often public facing, community oriented and celebratory, because it’s a lot easier to include children in that, than in intense, focused magical workings. Even so, you can’t expect children to stand quietly in ritual for an hour or two – sometimes they will, but you can’t count on it and there has to be room for who and how they are.

Most of my rituals were held in woodlands, with room for our younger humans to be around but not obliged to join in. Having them free range outside the circle worked well. They did what they needed to do and were only disruptive if they were unhappy – which was usually about tiredness, temperature or hunger, which is fair enough. I think it’s really valuable to give children space where they can be themselves and do their own things while also asking them to be responsible and considerate.

It can be tempting in ritual to want to focus inwards. You face the centre of the circle, in your magical time out of time, and you step away from the world. That might make sense for some kinds of magic, but for a Druid group honouring the wheel of the year it makes little sense. Most of nature is outside of that circle, surrounding it. It’s good to let that in – all the sights and sounds of it – and absorb that into the ritual experience. Children can be part of that.

Children can be powerful forces of nature in their own right. Children can be enchanting and magical. It depends a lot on how they are growing up, whether they feel able to explore and to express themselves and whether they have learned to do that cooperatively rather than trying to run roughshod over everyone else. Children being natural are not necessarily loud or inconsiderate. I’m inclined to think that most children in history would have learned to be quiet so as not to be eaten by large mammals. Being noisy is only an option if there are no predators.

On one occasion, the children at the edge of the ritual decided they were a wolf pack, and howled accordingly. It was a surprising thing for those of us in circle, but actually lovely, and felt right.

If you give children the chance to participate in a ritual, a lot of them will. They have things to say and to share, they want to be taken seriously and they like to join in, is my experience. Let a child stand in ritual with the same dignity as an adult, and many of them will. And you can absolutely count on them appearing, as if by magic, whenever the bread, cake and ritual drinks appear.

When I’ve been able to work with children, I’ve found them fantastic at actually making circles – going round the edge with something noisy to mark out the space for example. If you want to bless people in mirth and reverence by flicking water at them, children are often far better at doing this than adults are. Give them a chance to learn and participate, and they will.

When one of the adults felt unable to call a quarter during a funeral, my then very small son said he could and would do that – and he was magnificent. Don’t under-estimate what your youngest folk in circle can do or will want to do. Give them the opportunity and they can bring a great deal.

Not being grounded

Grounding is a strategy that many Pagans use after magic and ritual, or simply as an everyday practice. The idea is to come back into your body, connect with the ground, the physical, your roots etc. Over on facebook recently my friend Tre raised issues about what you do if your body is a place of pain, or if you’re happier with your head in the clouds. 

There are certainly times when the last place I want to be is in my own body. There have been times when I’ve come out of rituals and not done anything grounding because I needed to hold the sense of something floatier, more magical, less of this world. A lot of the time I’m big on being in the world and being present, but not all the time. I waft in and out at need. 

Earth as an element brings up associations with certain ways of being and feeling. Rooted, stable, feet on the ground, firm, strong and boundaried – and these things are all well and good if they suit you. However, if you’re much more of an air person, then being grounded might feel heavy, oppressive, pinned down and otherwise uncomfortable. Aside from the soles of our feet, we are mostly in the air, not in the earth. Our bodies are solid, but our lungs are airy and we spend all of our days bringing air inside us. Being in a state of airiness may make a lot more sense for some people.

You can reassert your boundaries and come back to yourself with air-focused meditations. You can engage with your breathing to settle as an airy being. You can feel how your body naturally reaches into the sky rather than connecting it to the earth. You can visualise protective bubbles surrounding you – these are all established techniques and there is no need to be earthy about them.

While I’ve been exploring these ideas it struck me that I’m often more water oriented when it comes to settling into myself. I seek out physical encounters with water when I need to feel my own edges. Many of the meditations I favour are about being on, or in water. I go to the stream when I need to calm myself. While magical practices are more likely to deploy water for cleansing, it’s not the only way to approach this element. Floating on water is just as valid a way of coming back to yourself as being on the ground.

Sometimes I find I have to seek the ungrounded. For me, that most often means being on a hilltop, exposed to the enormity of the sky and the energy of the wind. I crave the open space. It’s easy for me to feel too weighed down. Sometimes the earth is a place of comfort, but not always. Sometimes I need to stretch my arms wide to greet a vast horizon and let my soul rise with the songs of the larks.

Grounding has a role if you’re moving between magical space, and mundane space. It may not make sense to do this if you aren’t coming back. Not everyone has the scope to choose, but if you are running off to the woods for a while, if you are escaping the clutches of capitalism, if you are able to run away… maybe you don’t need to transition out of magical spaces and into ordinary ones. I have tested this a bit, there are rituals I did not close, circles I did not leave, and I do not believe that has harmed me in any way.

Druidry check in

One of the things I heartily recommend doing is to pause every now and then just to check in with where you are on your spiritual path. Are you doing enough to nourish your spirit? Have you let something slide that was important to you? Are you happy with what you’re doing, or do you need more, less, different…? 

It’s important to do this without being harsh on yourself. This isn’t about how good a Druid you are being, how diligent or anything else like that. If life hasn’t given you much space for Druidry, that’s simply a situation to acknowledge. If you’re feeling restless and need to change, that’s fine. If you’re comfortably doing the same things, that’s fine too. There are no wrong answers. The important bit is being self aware.

Where am I? Still mostly focused on nature as it manifests in my body, alongside issues of trying to heal and improve my strength. The bardic side of my life has taken a bit of a leap forwards, as you’ll know if you read my recent viola stories post. There’s definitely more to come on that score.

Much to my surprise, ritual is back in my life. I used to be interested in ritual primarily as a community activity. However, I’ve been exploring very small and intimate forms of ritual and magic, and this has become really important for me. It was wholly unexpected. I’ve found it really powerful and moving, and have every intention of devoting more time to this.

I’m very invested in what I’m doing in terms of community, performance and supporting others – those things are all very related to each other at the moment. 

Through the autumn I went through quite a deliberate process around re-enchantment. There’s a small book pertaining to that experience and I’ll get it out into the world at some point. At the moment I’m consolidating, letting a renewed sense of sacredness settle in me, and waiting to see what comes next. I’m working with my intuition a lot, of necessity, and I’m investing in the dreaming part of my life.

I know that this year is going to bring a lot of changes. I know what some of them are, but not all of them. I feel relaxed about this, and I welcome in the greater scope for adventures and creativity I know will be coming.

Using your voice

Voices are very powerful tools, and vocalising has some really interesting effects. One of the things that can make group ritual more powerful than solitary ritual is that when we’re working together, voices are usually deployed. It can be tempting to do a solitary ritual mostly in your head, while doing it outloud can feel weird and exposed. Being self-conscious can be a genuine barrier to doing any kind of spiritual work, but I think it’s worth pushing through if you can.

When everything happens inside our own heads, it can easily be hurried and also jumbled up with whatever else is in our heads at the time. Speaking something is a way of asserting it as your focus. Spells, prayers, rituals, affirmations – there are many things we might do because we want to change ourselves or the wider world. Vocalising creates focus, which means that our brains are more engaged with those intentions.

If you’re trying to put an intention or a prayer into the world, then having it go out from your body as sound is a way of making that happen. 

There’s a significant psychological aspect to this, too. Hearing yourself say something can be deeply affecting. Thinking the words ‘I need to heal’ is not the same as hearing yourself saying them. Again, if you’re trying to change something, the process of hearing yourself saying something out loud can be very effective. If something is too difficult, or too painful to say, or exposes you in ways you don’t like then that can also help guide your actions. I’m not averse to curses, but saying them aloud can make it really obvious whether you’re seeking justice or being vindictive. It’s not difficult to say ‘I hope this person gets everything they deserve’ but even in rage, it can be more obvious if you’re ill wishing someone just to be vindictive.

I find that spoken words don’t have to be very loud in order to be more effective than doing things in my head. It is enough to whisper, because that’s still a physical thing to do and brings in all of the aspects I’ve described above.

I don’t really know how this would work for someone with impaired hearing, or for anyone deaf or experiencing limitations around speaking. If anyone has any insight and is willing to share in the comments, that would be great.