Druidry and nudity
(Nimue)
Some Pagan and magical traditions use nudity. We don’t have that organised kind of approach within Druidry and I’ve never so much as encountered tales of Druid groups who expected nakedness. What I have run into a great deal of is people on the Druid path who appreciate spaces where clothing is optional.
When it comes to immersing yourself in the natural world, fewer clothes can be a great advantage. Of course this doesn’t have to mean full blown nudity – but it could if you wanted to. Simply getting your feet bare can do a lot to increase your sense of connection to the ground. Any bare skin gives you some interaction with the weather and the sun.
Being mindful of what too much sun does to us is essential. I use fabric a lot to manage my body temperature, and this is an important consideration for any kind of outdoors communing with nature. Heatstroke can make people very ill, hypothermia can kill and there’s nothing spiritual about making bad choices and harming yourself.
One aspect of nudity that people on the Druid path might consider, is the issue of justice. It would be great if we could desexualise bare skin. The idea that bare skin justifies sexual assault, or that clothing equals consent is abhorrent. Anything we can do to desexualise nudity is a way of working towards greater justice and a kinder society. We all have bodies, and the existence of those bodies is not permission for anyone to do anything to us. Consent should be explicitly given, not inferred, and how we think about nudity contributes to this understanding.
If we were able to desexualise nudity, we might also take down the assumption of threat that can go with nakedness. The idea that a naked person is a harmful person is something we could do with tackling. If we were more used to seeing non-threatening, non-sexual nudity we’d probably all have fewer hangups about our own bodies and a more forgiving approach to human forms as a whole. We might learn to be kinder to ourselves, and to each other, and less horrified by the animal nature of our own bodies.
Treating the human body as intrinsically obscene, is a very odd choice. That takes us into the realms of sin and temptation. We need to dismantle the idea that someone else’s naked body could ‘make’ another person do anything at all. There’s nothing wrong with feeling tempted by someone’s bodily presence, but such feelings need responding to with respect and care. It’s not really that difficult, we just have a lot of cultural stories that justify appalling behaviour. Ideas of sin and temptation look a lot like victim blaming to me.
We attach a lot of meaning to bodies, body shapes, clothing and lack of clothing. It’s all pretty arbitrary. Our bodies are to a large degree just the accident of our genetic inheritance. We’re impacted by our environments, affluence – or lack of it, life experience, opportunities, illnesses and so forth. A person’s appearance is not a moral issue, and probably has more to do with luck than virtue – or a lack thereof.
If nudity feels challenging, it’s worth taking some time to sit with it and give it a ponder. It can teach us a lot – and that information is well worth having. It’s good to be comfortable in your own skin, and the barriers to that can reveal a great deal.
