A place to stand
Being a solitary Druid feels a bit wrong for a lot of us. I tried it, I didn’t like it. Being a Druid definitely has a collective quality about it, and comes with a side order of feeling a need to belong. Mind you, that’s generally a human thing, we all want to fit somewhere. Writing about exclusion in Druidry I got a lot of responses both here and on facebook, from people who do not seem to have a place to stand.
Yesterday I took the plunge and offered something I’d been contemplating for a while.There is now a proper and permenant page for it here http://druidlife.wordpress.com/secret-order-steampunk-druids/
The Secret Order of Steampunk Druids is neither secretive nor very orderly. It may help to be into either Steampunk or Druidry, but the only qualification for membership is wanting to be a member. The only requirement is playing nicely. Believe what you want to believe. Practice however you practice. Talk about it by all means. Accept that other people may be different and that’s their business, and all shall be well.
I’m not going to set up any kind of online chat space because those seem to be places where people with too much time on their hands try to tell other people how to be Druids, and frankly that’s all very dull and it would be more fun to communicate by other means. In person is nice.
I’m barely going to run this at all, but if anyone fails to ‘play nicely’ I shall come round and raise my eyebrows at them until they reform. Probably. Or I’ll just giggle at them, but those of you who already wanted in are deeply splendid individuals so I doubt eyebrow raising will be called for.
If you need a place to stand, if you need to be recognised and to belong, and this seems like a space, claim it. If the idea of revival revival inspires an impish grin to form upon your features, hang around. There was so much energy, craziness and creativity in revival Druidry, it would be fun to try and reclaim that without all the fibbing about where it really came from.
In the meantime, initiate yourself with a nice cup of tea, or similar, and perhaps a bit of cake, feel free to contemplate what you might want to wear, and where you might take this, let me know if you are playing, and if you need to, give yourself a title. As a general guideline, the less you know about Druidry the more outlandish your title should be. People who know their stuff should have quiet, self effacing titles.
Our two major tenets are warmth, playfulness and comedy our three, three major tenets are warmth, comedy, playfulness and a strange devotion to Professor Elemental, Lord Summerisle, no, four…
And if you do see Professor Elemental when you are out there, do consider it your proper business as a Steampunk Druid, to follow him round singing songs from The Wicker Man. If you don’t know any, just hum…
