The Sacred Actions Wheel of the Year Journal and Earth-Based Spiritual Journaling — The Druids Garden

I’m really excited to announce the release of my new book: The Sacred Actions Journal: A Wheel of the Year Journal for Sustainable and Spiritual Practices. The Sacred Actions Journal is a follow-up to my 2021 book Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel and includes additional information on sacred actions, new insights on spiritual journaling, new…
The Sacred Actions Wheel of the Year Journal and Earth-Based Spiritual Journaling — The Druids Garden

Druidry for the 21st Century: Setting and Co-Creating Intentions with Nature

The Druid's Garden

Nature has so much magic, it benefits us always to work with her!

Intentions are powerful things. They allow us to shape our force of will and set a path forward. They help us figure out what our own goals are. And I think because of that, we often see them as very personal. This is something that we do for our own purposes. In many western occult traditions, and even in druidry, intentions are often framed as highly internal things: things we set, things we want to manifest, things that help us shape our vision. You’ll see this very frequently in any ritual work–set your intentions for a ritual, a creation, a space, a new piece of land, and so forth. I think a lot of this is influenced by western occultism, which unfortunately puts the practitioner in a place of power and at the center of a working…

View original post 2,262 more words

Beyond the Anthropocene: Druidry into the Future

The Druid's Garden

Druidry into the future

Druidry today has both ancient and modern roots, and there have been several distinct “phases” of druid practice historically. While it’s not critical that the practitioner of the modern druid traditions know what I share, it is helpful to have a sense of where the tradition comes from and the forces that shaped it–particularly so that we can think about where we are going. I want to talk today about both the past of druidry in order that we might talk about its future. How do we shape our tradition today so that we become the honored ancestors of tomorrow? What is the work that we might consider doing now, as druids, to create a tradition that endures?

Modern druidry is inspired by the Ancient Druids, a group of wise sages who kept history, traditions, and guided the spiritual life of their people. The Ancient Druids…

View original post 2,557 more words

Cycles of Nature, Cycles of our Lives: Allowing for Fallow and Abundance in Spiritual Studies

The Druid's Garden

Preamble: Now that I’m the Grand Archdruid of AODA, starting in 2020, I will be doing one AODA Druidry-based post a month. A lot of my posts are already tied with AODA practices as it is my core spiritual practice, but I wasn’t always as explicit about it as I will be now! 🙂 All of these posts, while framed in the context of AODA druidry, will be applicable to many different kinds of nature-based spiritualities and druidries.

A beautiful cardinal flower in late summer

The Wheel of the Seasons offers us many lessons and one of the core principles in AODA is the principle of the Cycle and Season. In Western Pennsylvania, where I live, we have a growing season that runs from May to late October. That us, from Beltane to Samhain, during the light half of the year, we can grow vegetables, forage berries, and be…

View original post 2,026 more words

On Being a Minority Religion and Paths to Building Respect

The Druid's Garden

“I’m sorry, I’m unavailable to meet on that day.”

A pause, “well, why is that? This is an important meeting.”

“Because it is a major holiday for me, and I am taking a personal day to celebrate it.”

Another, longer pause. “Wait, your holiday is Halloween? That’s not a religious holiday.”

“No, my holiday is Samhain, which is a holiday dedicated to my ancestors. Modern Halloween traditions actually derived from this much older holiday.”

Another pause. “Can’t you celebrate it on another day?”

“No. The timing is critical to the celebration. Would I ask you to meet on Christmas or Easter?”

Another pause. “That’s not the same thing.”

The above interchange is a fairly common interaction fairly typical of my workplace experiences in being a minority religion, a druid, here in the USA. In fact, I had this exchange with someone just last week. Since this kind of thing seems…

View original post 2,546 more words

Ancient Order of Druids in America

The Druid's Garden

Dear readers, I’m taking a pause from my regular article-style blog posts this week to share some big news and do a bit of reflection. Last week, as of the Fall Equinox, I became the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA). I’ve been in leadership and service with the AODA since 2013, serving first as Trilithon journal editor for four years, then as Grand Pendragon, then as the Archdruid of Water for the last four years. And now, I’ve stepped up to lead the AODA, following Gordon Cooper, and before him, my friend and mentor, John Michael Greer. Because of this, I wanted to take a week to share my story of AODA and reflect on this path. I do this for a few reasons–first, I wanted to share the news. But also, I realize that a lot of people may find this reflection useful…

View original post 2,104 more words

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing: A Healing Grove of Renewal

The Druid's Garden

Reishi growing from a stump in my sacred forest

Many years ago, I shared the story of the “mystery of the stumps“, which was my path into druidry. I grew up spending all my days in a forest that was rich, full, and bountiful. When I was 14, that forest was logged. My heart broke, and afterward, I tried to enter the forest but it was horrible: downed trees everywhere, so much damage, so many friends that had been cut and taken away. I thought the forest would never heal. I withdrew not only from nature, but from my spirit and creative gifts, and spent a time in numbness and mourning–a period that lasted almost 10 years. I didn’t return to the forest till I was 24. When I finally went back in, so much had changed–the land was regrowing. Large thickets of birch, blackberry, and cherries were…

View original post 3,153 more words

Working with and Honoring the Sun at the Solstice

The Druid's Garden

Sacred rays of the sun

The sun’s rays come over the horizon, on the solstice, the most sacred of days. The solstice goes my many names, the day of high light, midsummer, Alban Hefin. Across the globe and through time, it has been celebrated since before recorded history. In the light of the sun, we have strength, warmth, growth, energy, abundance, healing, and wisdom. The sun has been shining down upon our beautiful planet has been shining for at least four billion years and we can expect it to remain unchanged for another five billion years. The sun is also enormous–it accounts for 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. It is such an incredible thing that it’s hard to image in the scope of the sun as it compares to of human lives or human history. You might say that the sun is one of the most…

View original post 1,668 more words

Embracing Ancestral Fires and Fire-starting at Beltane

The Druid's Garden

An awen-shaped sacred fire, created from my flint and steel

The tiny sparks from my flint and steel shower down on my char cloth. This flint and steel set was a gift from a fellow druid from almost a decade ago, a gift that has long offered me a connection with my ancestors. It takes me a few moments to remember the technique he taught me, striking the steel against the flint in a particular way with a particulary angle to my body. Starting a fire in an ancestral way isn’t just a mental act; its an emboded one. I breathe deeply and remember, and the tiny sparks fly from my tools to the char cloth. After a few more attempts, a single spark lands on the cloth and starts to glow orange. I carefully pick up the char cloth and blow on it to increase the ember size, then…

View original post 2,090 more words

Working Deeply with Water: Waters of the World Shrine and Sacred Waters

The Druid's Garden

Primal Water from the Plant Spirit Oracle

In the druid tradition, water represents the west, the place of emotions and intuition, the place of our ancestors and of the honored dead. Water is often connected with the salmon of wisdom, the salmon who dwells in a sacred pool, offering his wisdom to those who seek him. Water may serve as a gateway to other worlds and as a tool for scrying. Water can be used as a tool understand flows of all kinds. You can study flowing water through observation, fishing, boating or swimming and connected with in order to help us understand deep insights. Snow and ice can likewise, be used as spiritual tools. Water-based animals like turtles, fish, salamanders, dragonflies or water-based plants like cattail, calamus, or lotus are powerful allies for spiritual work. Working deeply with water is part of several druid teachings and courses, and…

View original post 2,603 more words