Responsible Druid
Anyone who read the comments yesterday will see that I’ve been told off by a ‘Senior Druid’. My inclusive, find your own path approach risks leading the unwary into bad practice and improper Druidry, apparently. So, today I’d like to mention a thing that I consider really important.
The first thing that you do when you set out to become a Druid, is to take responsibility for your path.
There are many people who can teach you things about what Druidry might mean. There books aplenty. There are those who will say you have to read certain things, believe certain things, wear the right robes. You may be told to join the right Order, celebrate specific festivals or be encouraged to give yourself an unpronounceable name in a language you don’t speak. There are those who will offer you things that seem so mad, unfounded and impossible that you are left bemused and uncomfortable. There are others who will encourage you to explore widely and draw your own conclusions. I fall firmly into the final group, I think there are very few things you ‘must’ do in order to be a Druid, but one of them, without any doubt, is to take responsibility for your own path, and never abdicate that to someone else, no matter how senior they seem, how many books they’ve written or how many blog follower they have. Being responsible for your own path is your sacred duty as a Druid.
Ancient Druidry cast the participants as the thinking classes of the Celtic peoples. Graeme Talboys has written eloquently on this topic, and if you’d like to look into it, I recommend getting one of his books with ‘Druid’ in the title (he also writes excellent fiction). As I see it, any area of intellectual endeavour is therefore valid work as part of your Druidry. History and philosophy are always popular, but with crisis looming, I think we need more Druid economists, politicians, alternative technology experts and other forward looking academics, too.
Unless you are physically unable to get outside, or are in a place where that’s unsafe, then your Druidry should take you outside. By all means use the computer to do your intellectual learning, but also get out and do something. Explore your land. Druids need soil, and frequently need trees. Druids in landscapes that do not naturally feature trees have to figure out what, in the absence of trees, a Druid in their part of the world should be engaging with. Explore ancestry. Think. Learn. Pay attention to your emotional responses. Create, imagine, follow your inspiration.
I’ve talked about service recently, and the importance of that not being po-faced martyrdom. I’ll say that again. Serve by doing the good stuff.
On the surface that’s all very clear and ‘thou shalt’, but only in broad brush strokes. In practice, there’s such a vast amount to choose from as you find your own path. Your inspiration and your passion should guide those choices. Follow the call of your heart and the cry of your animal self. Listen to the land, and listen to your own wisdom. Of course listen to what other people do and think, because you can steal ideas, draw inspiration, find connections, and spare yourself from re-inventing the wheel all the time.
Every now and then you will run into someone who has given themselves a Senior Druid title and decided that they have the right to dictate how you should go about your Druidry. What you do with that, is your responsibility. All I can say is, the ‘Senior Druid’ title is often self chosen. If someone runs an Order, has a big Grove, teaches and you’ve gone to them seeking advice, then you might want to listen to what they say. No experienced Druid worth their salt throws themselves at other people uninvited to say what should and shouldn’t be happening, unless that person is actively dangerous to themselves or others. Anyone doing this is probably on an ego trip and doesn’t deserve your attention.
You are responsible for your path, and that means you are responsible for deciding whose advice to follow. I do not have all the answers. Most days the best I can manage is to formulate questions. Hang around with me and you are never going to get to call yourself a Senior Druid, and if that bothers you, then you’re in the wrong place! (Unless, as Graeme suggested yesterday, you become the sort of senior Druid who goes into the woods and then forgets what they were doing there… but that’s another story.)
