A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Reskilling at Imbolc

Imbolc–the first signs of spring (artwork by myself and my father, Mark Driscoll)

In a traditional neopagan Wheel of the Year, Imbolc is the holiday that offers the first signs of spring. Most traditionally, this is when the ewes began to lactate, and the snowdrops appeared on the landscape in the British Isles. In the age of climate instability, traditional seasonal interpretations become challenged for many reasons–not the least of which are climate disruptions. So how might we bring the holiday of Imbolc into the 21st century and think about what this holiday means to us today?

As I’ve discussed in earlier posts in this series, the 21st Century, the Age of the Anthropocene, offers us a set of unprecedented challenges and yet opportunities. As a permaculture designer, I think it’s important to recognize that while the problems we already face are unavoidable, these problems give us a…

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Putting the Garden to Sleep: End of Season Activities and Rituals

The Druid's Garden

The day before the first hard frost. Our garden is still bountiful as the Butzemann watches over all….As the darkness continues to grow deeper on the landscape, it is high time to consider how to put the garden to rest for the winter and honor the garden that has offered you so much bounty and joy for the season. I actually find this one of my favorite gardening activities of the year, both on a metaphysical and physical level. There’s something special about “tucking” your garden in after a productive growing season and knowing that the land will go fallow and rest as the cold and ice come. Here are both the physical activities and sacred activities that you can do to help put your garden to rest.

Do note that my timings are based on the temperate climate in Western Pennsylvania, USDA Zone 6A. You can adapt appropriately based…

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Sacred Actions: Doing our Bit in the World

The Druid's Garden

Sacred action is all about us learning how to align our outer lives with our inner core of nature spirituality and connectedness, and ultimately, help us live more regeneratively and with care. Sacred action is about doing small, slow things in our own lives to better align with our sacred nature-based spiritual practices and the living earth. It is through these seemingly mundane changes that we create a better today, a better tomorrow, and a better world.

Sacred Actions – A new graphic for the Sacred Actions wheel of the year

Sacred refers to things that are connected, meaningful, reverent, or somehow tied to our sense of the spiritual or the divine. Most of the time, this word is used in relation to things that are not part of mundane life: these are the special moments, ceremonies, or spiritual insights that impact us deeply. When we experience a sense of…

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Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year Through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices

The Druid's Garden

Sacred Actions book!

I’m really excited to announce that my new book through REDFeather / Shiffer Publishing is now availableo! The Book is titled Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year Through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices. I wanted to give you an introduction to the book and the concepts behind the book. If you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time, you’ll see a great deal of familiarity: my explorations and writing on this blog shaped this book, although the book goes well beyond the blog. In a nutshell, Sacred Actions presents a hybridization of nature spirituality, sustainable living, and permaculture practices and ethics. I can’t wait to introduce it to you in today’s post!

Order in the US or UK from the Publisher (available now). Pre-order from Amazon (US) or Amazon (UK). Pre-Order in Australia from Booktopia.

As I’ve written on this blog before…

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Land Healing at the Druid’s Garden: Replanting, Forest Healing, and Refugia Update

The Druid's Garden

Ramps planted in my Grove of Renewal

Today I wanted to take some time to share some of the updates on the land healing and permaculture practices we are enacting at the Druid’s Garden Homestead. As I’ve shared in earlier posts, when we purchased this land four years ago, the family who owned it just before us selectively logged about 3 acres, leaving the forest an absolute mess. The land otherwise was perfect–we have our own spring, a nice sunny area for gardens….and three acres of land in desperate need of healing. Since land healing is one of my primary forms of spiritual practice, I rolled up my sleeves and purchased the land! As this ongoing land healing project takes shape, I try to check in on the blog every once in a while to share new insights, techniques, and experiences. Today I want to spend some time offering updates…

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Drought workings: A Druid’s Perspective on Drought and Dry Weather

The Druid's Garden

2020 is certainly a year to remember for many of us in the human realm. Here in Western Pennsylvania and up along many parts of New England, we’ve had an additional serious problem affecting the natural world—an extreme drought. This summer, the jet stream is way off of its normal course and so most of the major storms that would typically hit us have been forced south of us, creating the “moderate” drought that we are now in and causing uncharacteristically dry conditions. know there are other serious droughts around the world, such as the three-year drought currently happening in Germany. Climate change is making these kinds of weather events all the more common and teaching us powerful lessons along the way. In today’s post, I’ll share some drought lessons, drought land healing, and ways of working and honoring water.

Honoring Water and the Scarcity of Water

Altar for water…

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Land Healing: Distance Work and Levels of Connection

The Druid's Garden

The Laurel Highlands – Overlooking the mountains

Often, working as a land healer is very local work: you work with the plants, animals, bodies of water, insect life, and many other aspects of life that are nearby to you. Depending on where you live, this is often ample enough for any of us to do. But, you may also feel led to do work at distance on behalf of a place–perhaps a place you visited or one that is calling to you. Even though you live far away or cannot reach that place, you want to help. This is where distance land healing can come in.

An important aspect of energetic land healing (that is, working in a ritual way to help bring positive energy, blessing, and healing to land, bodies of water, animals, plants, insects, and more) is distance work. Often, land we want to heal (such as those…

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Pattern Literacy: A Guide to Nature’s Archetypes

The Druid's Garden

The unfolding of the bramble ferns in the spring always feels, to me, like the unfolding of worlds. The tightly packed fronds, formed at the end of last season and dormant all winter, slowly emerge, uncurling so slowly that you can’t see it happen, but if you come back later in the day, you can see clear progress. I like to meditate with these ferns, as they connect me to the deeper energies of the cosmos. The unfolding of the fern frond, there in my backyard, is the same pattern as the Milky Way galaxy in which we all reside. It is in this sacred pattern that I can see the connection to all things and connect with nature deeply.

Sacred Spiral in the Spring Ferns

This post is a follow-up to a great conversation about wildcrafting one’s own druidry that members of the Ancient Order of Druids in America…

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Forest Regeneration at the Druid’s Garden Homestead: Forest Hugelkultur, Replanting and More!

The Druid's Garden

Red Elder – helping the forest recover

The property was almost perfect: in the right location, a natural spring as a water source, a small and nice house with a huge hearth, areas for chickens and gardens, a small pond and a stream bordering the edge of the property….pretty much everything was exactly what we hoped. Except for one thing: right before selling the property, the previous owners did some logging for profit, taking out most of the mature overstory of trees on 3 of the 5 acres. This left the forest in a very damaged place: cut down trees, lots of smaller limbs and brush, often piled up more than 5-8 feet high in places. I remember when I went to look at the property and started walking the land and just saying, “Why would they do this?” It hurt my heart. Could I live here, seeing what had…

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Introduction to Sacred Gardening: Connection, Reciprocity, and Honoring Life — The Druid’s Garden

Walking into a sacred garden is like walking into another world, one full of joy, happiness, and wholeness. Fruit hanging from happy branches, plants coming up from all angles inviting a nibble, a taste, a touch. The pathways spiral and you get lost, looking at flowers, breathing in the fresh air, and tasting the tart […]

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