Thursday, September 3, 2009

Song of a Daily Druid

I'm excited and pleased to announce the publication of my new monthly column over at Pagan Pages: Song of a Daily Druid!

This month's column, "How I Found a Home in Druidry," serves as an introduction to myself and my personal approach to Druidry, tracing the spiraling journey of my childhood through poetry, philosophy, landscape and music which echoed what I would eventually come to call the Ways of Bard, Ovate and Druid:

In the beginning, I was a wild child, a woodsy child, a child who could concentrate all of my attention on holding perfectly still so as not to startle the robin in the grass. I could disappear into the tense air of rapt attention, forget my own little body completely as my eyes widened and my breath stilled. Once, the robin's twitching eyes turned towards me, and I thought I heard it whisper... Cheer-up. Cheer-up, calmly, almost with amusement, you know, I can see you.

That was when I was a very little girl. As sometimes happens, eventually I grew up and stopped listening so closely to the world, to the landscape and the wilderness. It would be years before I rediscovered the rapture of stilled breath or the ecstasy, the going-out-ness, of listening closely and attending with reverence to sacred nature. Druidry would restore my sense of connection and intimacy with the natural world; it would open me to new ways of living with creativity and wisdom, playfulness and respect; it would bring me home to myself, to this person dwelling in my own particular body in my own particular place in a vast landscape infused with Spirit. Druidry was a home-coming for me, as so many Pagans and Witches before me have described their own rediscoveries. One day, I would look into the eyes of the world and discover—like some startled scullery maid or the only daughter of a widower—my real destiny wearing a strange new face, a face of beauty and dignity, but smiling at me with the same old familiar affection.

(....... To read more, visit Song of a Daily Druid)


In future issues, I'll be sharing some daily and seasonal practices of my own, and exploring how they incorporate and interweave the three elements, the three realms and the three "ways" of modern Druidry. I hope you'll hop on over to check it out, as well as the many other interesting articles, interviews and advice columns also on Pagan Pages.

*NB: At the moment, there are several formatting problems with the online publication of the column, but editors are working to correct these as quickly as possible!

7 comments:

  1. I've added it to my feeds. Look forward to your writings. :o)

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  2. Interesting post and beautifully written for sure. The third way (bardic section) has some supports in the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer (the road to Elfland) and in Fiona Macleod's Orchil prose poem (the weft of eternal beauty). I also liked the way you wove the third thing into coming into sacred space. Ovates though were doers - seers and healers and so I wonder how you personally see the relation to Other space with seeing and healing?

    Blessings,
    David

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  3. Pom and David, Thanks for leaving comments here! I'm not sure exactly how reader commenting works over at the Pagan Pages site, so it's nice to be able to respond personally to your thoughts.

    David, I feel as though I'm still very much working through the specifically Druidic aspects of a lot of what I talked about in the article. Working through the AODA program of study, I guess I consider myself deep in the midst of my Ovate studies (my focus for the Second Degree). Whereas poetry and music are things I've done all my life and I have a good understanding of how aesthetic theory relates to practice there, I am only just beginning to learn how landscape, ecology and psychology relate to things like dream work, healing, divination and other energy working.

    So what I think I'm saying is... I don't know yet. :) I have some intuition and hunches about what the relationships might be--directions to go in, things to explore--but for now, I'm feeling my way along, trying to keep theory grounded in practice without letting mere practice overtake my understanding of what it is I think I'm doing.... if that makes any sense. ;) It seems to me, though, that both healing (and its broader category of magic) and seership (or journey-/dreamwork) must be founded in a healthy and well-established understanding of relationships and patterns in nature: in the body, in the land, in the currents of history and causality. And just like not all poetry is in rhyming iambic, I have a feeling that much of healing and seership do not come in forms of overt mystical occurrences like hallucinatory visions or miraculous recoveries, but are more subtle in their expression.... But that's just a guess!

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  4. In what little experience I've had, its not either practice or theory but relationship that is the seed of seeing and healing. That may be the third thing of it - out of relationship comes both a responsibility and the ability to fulfill that responsibility.

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  5. I like the newsletter! Thank you for posting the link! (awesome pic I noticed right away when I opened the link)!

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  6. For his prolonged Honour.
    Old friend..High priest..has given me to consider your site due for my loving of nature also drawing myself nearer to beliefs yours thinking his intentions. Myself sailing high in nature without these beliefs attracted?
    Will watch as a playfellow (Celeb no post)
    Please take my manners Ali. With peace.

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