White Pine Towering in a Conifer Forest at Parker Dam State Park, PA

In the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) legend, there was a terrible conflict between five different nations of people. This conflict was rooted in cycles of pain, revenge, and chaos. A messenger of peace sent from the Great Spirit, the “Peacemaker,” sought to unite the five warring tribes. After convincing them to unite, they came together to make peace, but they still carried their weapons. The Peacemaker uprooted a White Pine tree and had them throw all of their weapons into the hole. He then replanted the tree, and the underground waters carried away the weapons. On the tree, the needles grew in clusters of five, to represent the five nations who came to find peace. The roots of the tree spread out in four directions, to the north, south, east and west; the roots are called the roots…

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Abundance and Scarcity

Happiness

On Being an American Druid

The Druid's Garden

The quintessential image of a druid is a group of people, all in white robes, performing ritual inside an ancient circle of stones. This image is probably the most known and pervasive of all visuzaliations of druidry, and for many, it shapes the our perceptions of what druidry should be. But taken in a North American context, this image presents two problems. First, we have no such ancient stone circles and two, another group has already claimed the quitessential white robe, and its not a group with which we want to associate our tradition. This kind of tension, along with many other unique features of our landscape, make being an American druid inherently different than a druid located somewhere else in the world. In the case of any spiritual practice, context matters, and context shapes so much of the daily pracice and work. And so today, I’m going to answer…

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The Subconscious Mind

Law of Gender

Karma and Dharma

A Bardic Storytelling Ritual for Empowerment

The Druid's Garden

Everyone has a story to tell, and some stories are worth their weight in gold. How we retell past events, through the bardic art of storytelling, can help shape our present understanding. Thinking about stories as acts of empowerment in this way is particularly important in an age where so many of us feel disempowered. One of the things I’ve noticed a lot lately is that people, of all ages, are really down, feeling defeated, and feeling burned out. They feel like they don’t have a lot of agency or power. And so, using ritual and spiritual practices to help us find our power, and better understand it, is an extremely useful practice. Storytelling is a form of magic, in this case, through a bardic storytelling ritual, to help empower us and bring us hope. So today’s post, in line with my larger series on the bardic arts, will…

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