Druid Philosophy

(Nimue)

It’s often said that Druidry is as much a philosophy as a spiritual path. For me, the idea of taking a philosophical approach to life has been an important part of how I do the Druidry, and I’m certainly not unusual in that regard. Contemplative approaches to Druidry also lend themselves to philosophical approaches.

At the moment I’m working on a book about making Druidry part of your everyday life. I’m writing about values and how to live them, so this is quite a philosophical book. The process has been educational – that’s often the way of it with the non-fiction writing. I started out with a lot of headings I thought were relevant – things like patience, generosity, justice, kindness – topics I’ve explored on here repeatedly. I’m trying to distil what I know down into statements of a few hundred words about how to live each of these things.

What I’m finding as I go along is how connected each of these ideas is. I’d not sat down beforehand to try and create an overarching vision of what Druidry is, but apparently that’s what I’ve got. There’s a coherence to this, and every idea I want to explore is part of an interconnected web of ideas. I’m seeing how each of the concepts I think is important is connected to all the others.

I’m not bringing any radically new ideas to the mix here. Some of the ideas I’m talking about are found in most spiritual traditions. Some relate to what we know about the ancient Druids, others draw on qualities that modern Druidry embraces. I’m not offering any kind of hot new take on what it means to be a Druid. What the book does is get into the details of a lot of ideas, and explores how we can bring those into our daily lives. Increasingly it’s also about the interconnections. This week for example I’ve been thinking a lot about the interplay between kindness and justice.

At the moment this book is going out in sections of Patreon each month but once it is finished I will make it more widely available.