The anti-fascist Druid
(Nimue).
For me, the Druid path is inherently anti-fascist. There are people who try to make it about blood heritage, race, notions of purity and superiority but those people are wrong and just playing out their own vile ideas. They are not real Druids.
That we have a bard path is evidence enough that Druidry is intrinsically anti-fascist. Fascists hate creativity, silence poets, and strip beauty from the world. Thus being creative and imaginative and daring to consider possibilities that are not offered to us is a meaningful form of resistance.
Druidry has always been about service and community. We don’t know a great deal about the ancient Druids, but they had roles in Celtic society that were about knowledge. Fascists tend to be averse to knowledge and actively suppress learning and study. Undertaking to learn and to teach is also a form of resistance.
For me, justice is a really important part of the modern Druid path. We have to speak against injustice, and stand against it in whatever ways we can. Those of us who have most power and privilege have the greatest obligation to act. We should not place the struggle for justice on the shoulders of those vulnerable people who most urgently need fair treatment.
We know that ancient Druids stood for peace and would go onto battlefields to halt conflict. We must seek the peace that is based on justice, not the false peace that comes from playing along with oppressors.
If we succumb to hate, cynicism, bitterness or apathy, then fascism wins. The most important fight any of us can take on in the face of what’s happening, is the fight to keep our hearts open, and not to let the aggressors colonise our minds. We have to believe the best of each other, and trust in each other’s goodness as much as we can. We need to stay tender and compassionate, and willing to imagine that things can be better. Without that belief we will fail to step up and do what we can do.
Words of love and solidarity matter right now. Whatever comfort and support we can offer each other, is worth offering. I have many friends – including many Druid friends – in America, and I grieve alongside you over what’s happening. I honour my friends around the world who have the wisdom and compassion to recognise that this is our problem too, that we are all affected by what’s happened and by what is likely to follow.
Focus on what you can do. Whatever it is, if you can act in some way to support community, to care for people, or for the living world, to create beauty, share ideas, keep hope alive – do those things. It’s all there is.
I am dedicated to doing what I can to help support good people in not succumbing to fear or despair. I’ll share what I can to nourish hearts and hopes, and to keep alive ideas about better ways of being and how we build that future. It will not build itself.
