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The ancient tradition of Druidry continues today and is experiencing a
flourishing resurgence around the world. An Earth based faith, Druidry melds the love of sea, sky, and land with ritual, story telling, poetry, music, and the
visual arts. Druids are spiritual counselors and philosophers who offer
guidance about the enigmas, conundrums, and problems of daily life.
The spiritual lineage of Druidry spans thousands of years. The cave
initiations of Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain, 25,000 years ago were mirrored around 3,000 B.C. in the rebirth mounds of New Grange, Ireland.
They speak to the heart, of the spiritual awakening of creativity after a
period of immersion in the darkness of the void. Scottish Druids and Bards
trained this way for around another hundred years, and, one of the primary themes of Druid and Celtic spirituality continues to be the quest for spiritual
transformation through creative manifestation.
Julius Caesar and other classical writers were the first to document Celts
and Druids in current recorded history. At that time there was a great deal of
crosspollination of the Greek and Roman cultures with the Celtic. The Celts
already had a highly developed spirituality.
There were the Bards who were singers and story tellers; the Ovates who were time travellers and healers; and the Druids who were teachers, philosophers, and judges. Their spiritual teachings were encoded in their stories, songs, and myths.
Rooted deep in times long past, Druidry is a pathway that is alive with the
sacredness of nature. Druidry embraces the wheel of cyclical existences, the
circling, and the spiraling. Realizing the divinity within everything, Druids
sought answers to the eternal questions revolving around the unfoldment of
the flower that is the individual soul, as it endures through an eternity of
lives, from dawn to dusk and from season to season.
The Druidry of Celts centered around maintaining their spiritual balance and
sacred connectivity with the natural world by treating all things hallowed
with the respect and reverence they deserved. The living waters of rivers,
springs, and wells were venerated because they were believed to have both
magickal and curative powers.
Fairy Mounds, the Wee Folk, Mineral Spirits, Hollow Hills, Leprechauns,
Mound Building, Animal Spirits, Holy Wells, Sacred Lakes, Tree Spirits, the
Sidhe. . . the Druidic Celtic world was alive with the vibrancy and the
glittering glories of hosts of Fairies; of the elemental beings of fire, earth, air,
and water; of the holy divinity of the land, the sea, and the sky.
The Sacred Pathway of Druidry is a Wisdom Quest that embraces life as a
magical celebration and honors animal, tree, stone, and star lore. It holds the
body, sexuality, relationships, community, the land, the Earth, and the
universe as sacred.
The wild, nature, groves, restorative justice, creativity, artistry, beauty,
peace, crystals, story, myth, and ancestors are all lovingly revered. There
is no separation between the worlds for their deities who are authentically
luminal. They are an integral part of everyday living, where the fires of the
heart, hearth, and home burn brightly as one flame.
(Author Unknown)
The Path of Druidry
Lead me along the leafy pathways lit
By blossom-lamps, and hung with fairy signs That tell of hidden bowers where softly shines The sun, and where the thrushes flute and flit.
- Frank D. Sherman, "Poetry of Nature."
While the world was busy welcoming the arrival of the twentieth century on December 31, 1900, a forceful gale on England's Salisbury Plain blew over one of the ancient monumental stones at Stonehenge.
