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 Gardening: A Druid’s Spiritual Approach to Weeding and Clearing Plants

The Druid's Garden

A shrine for the spirits of nature in a new outdoor kitchen area

Druids revere all nature as sacred–but what happens when you need to weed your garden? What happens when you need to clear a new area for a project where lots of things are growing? Is there a way to clear plants or trees honorably and with reverence? In fact, there certainly is! In today’s post, I’ll walk through some simple suggestions for how to weed and clear plants respectfully and with reverence. This is all part of my philosophy of Sacred Action, or bringing earth-honoring, care-oriented activities into our every day life (if you are interested in this concept, check out my Sacred Actions book!). This is part of what sacred gardening, creating a true Druid’s garden, is all about!

Our big project this year was starting to build an wood-fired, naturally built outdoor kitchen with…

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Sacred Trees in the Americas: American Hazel (Corylus americana) Magic, Ecology, and Sacred Uses

The Druid's Garden

American Hazelnuts in a cluster getting ready to ripen

For three years, I have had my eye on our American hazel bushes here at the homestead. When we first moved to the property, much of the understory was damaged with the logging the previous owners did and it took time for the hazels to recover. Thus, for the last few years, I’ve watched the hazels grow taller and larger each year and kept looking excitedly for any signs of nuts setting. This past fall, I was delighted to find handfuls of delicious wild American hazelnuts and connect with the incredible wisdom that they offer.

While Hazel is a critically important tree in the mythology and magical tradition of Druidry and in Europe more broadly, The Hazel is one of the sacred trees identified by the druids as a tree tied to wisdom and the flow of Awen, and it is…

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A Walk Through a Sacred Garden

The Druid's Garden

View of some of our gardens at Lughnasadh! Here you can see our main garden (on the left, annuals) and the meditation garden (on the right; smaller perennials). We also have other perennial patches we are cultivating on other parts of the property. And of course, our wonderful greenhouse in the center! Behind the greenhouse is a compost tumbler. In front of the greenhouse, you can see our duck enclosure (more about that later). Towards the back in the center, you can see our guinea/chicken enclosure and goose enclosure. The compost area is off to the back left.

Today, we are taking a walk through the sacred gardens at the Druid’s Garden Homestead. There are so many lessons to learn with a simple walk in a beautiful garden. Today’s Lughnasadh garden walk reminds us of the power of nature to heal wounds, strengthen our spirits, and help us through challenging…

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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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Wildcrafting Druidry: Getting Started in Your Ecosystem

The Druid's Garden

One of the strengths of AODA druidry is our emphasis on developing what Gordon Cooper calls “wildcrafted druidries“–these are druid practices that are localized to our place, rooted in our ecosystems, and designed in conjunction with the world and landscapes immediately around us. Wildcrafted druidries are in line with the recently released seven principles of AODA, principles that include rooting nature at the center of our practice, practicing nature reverence, working with cycles and seasons, and wildcrafting druidry. But taking the first steps into wildcrafting your practice can be a bit overwhelming, and can be complicated by a number of other factors. What if you are a new druid and don’t know much about your ecosystem? What if you are a druid who is traveling a lot or is transient? What if you are a druid who just moved to a new ecosystem after establishing yourself firmly…

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Using an Oracle or Tarot Deck to Establish Sacred Space

The Druid's Garden

Plant Spirit Oracle

As some of you may know from my posts on Facebook and Instagram, in early 2020, I’ll be releasing the Plant Spirit Oracle as my second self-published divination deck (if you want to support the project, see link in the right sidebar with the Oak image). I described the Plant Spirit Oracle project a bit in an earlier post. For today’s post, I wanted to share a ritual space strategy that I developed as part of the PSO project–how to use a tarot or oracle deck to establish a sacred space.

The idea in a nutshell is that rather than calling in th elements or powers in a more static way, you can use an oracle deck to draw upon them in a more dynamic way. Thus, each time you create sacred space, you will be asking the cards to help you select the right…

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A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing: Ecosystems, Interconnectivity, and Planting Guilds

The Druid's Garden

I had a recent conversation with a friend who lives in the town where I work (and where I used to rent a house). I had commented on how “nice” her lawn looked, as it was growing tall full of clover, dandelions, all heal, and so many other blooming plants; it was wild and beautiful. She laughed and said that she wished her neighbor felt the same way! She said that her lawn would have to be mowed that very day, and if she didn’t do so, her neighbor had already threatened her with calling the township due to the 6″ grass ordinance. Even though my friend isn’t a druid, this prompted a deep conversation about nature, ecology, and ecosystems. We started talking about the broader ecosystem, and the connectivity of all life–how she wanted to support insect life, bees, and larger life in her small patch of…

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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…

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