Announcements

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Curious Questions part II

This was a response to an inquiry I received on Druidry. The querent asked really good questions. I’m not sharing his writings to protect his privacy, but I do want to share my responses as he moved me to put this down in writing in a way that I don’t often take the time to do.

Summary of conversation – “I’m not convinced that there is life after death. I also want to know more about druidry as an experience and also how your values and morals guide you. Seems that this kind of religion could be used for selfish purposes”


Sure. If you believe life ends at the end of this incarnation and time is linear – you’re existence will be bound by these rules and you will make decisions based on that. My experience is that the universe has much more poetry, vastness and strangeness to it than that. Science is now starting to find quarks that jump time and space, particles that fly through the Earth without touching a single atom and studies concerning near death experience and ghostly phenomena seem to point out that we don’t know the half of it..


Druidism is an experiential path, not one of dogma as you may be use to studying. So you’re only going to be able to pierce the veil so much before your intellectual mind begins to hurt 🙂

Only giving your intellectual side to life will yield a texture of dry, uninspiring cynicism to your life. This is the curse of the spirit that relies too much on Air. The new druid synchronizes their exploration to that of the forest and the seasons. Many folks approach earth centered spirituality with a strong Air affinity (intellectual bent) and it is the age of Aquarius which is an Air sign, but if you begin the OBOD druid path, you’ll work on balancing the other 3 elements of your personality in the Bardic grade. Really neat opportunity to explore yourself on a ‘guided path’ using meditation, ritual and other projects that bring better balance. You’ll gain new perspectives on poetry than you have contemplated in the past. You’ll connect to inspiration within yourself and it will be totally unique to you (no one can teach you) and you’ll only get out what you put into it.

As for morality. My morality is informed by my values. That includes fair dealings with other people in business and social interactions, respect for the environment, raising children that are drug free, responsible and well adjusted in order to provide for themselves, their family and contribute in the world – this is just to name a few. I find other druids to be open minded, willing to help and non-judgemental of others.

Abuse of followers? You mean like suicide cults, religious based racism, bombers and priests taking advantage of children? We don’t have clergy and I’m hardly the leader of any ‘movement’. We have Awen’s Light Grove as a place for druids to meet together and I’m the organizer, provide some direction to make it worthwhile for folks. I like to answer questions and be a beacon for people seeking.

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Polytheism isn’t that hard to adopt – just let go of dualism

I’ve come to the realization years ago that everything is made of energy. Guess that’s not so tough as the latest minds in physics are expounding the same concept.

For me, this leads me to a comfortable place of ’spiritual relativity’. Not values, mind you, but the idea that if all things are made of energy, then personifications of different energies make poetic sense. Of the thousands of gods that men and women have created, each has a name, a focus and a custom that makes it unique and special to the culture that identified it. Doesn’t even have to be unique – many god and goddess tales are not much different than the ancient pagan counter part or simply different cultures that may not be separated by time. An example here would be Mithras and Jesus – same birthday – different astrological sign and energy. Jesus is of the Picsean age and Mithras of the Taurean age. They are both celestial deities marking the procession of the Equinoxes and marking the Solstice.

Once we accept that this universe is made up of different energies that can be linked to archetypal ideas or perhaps link into the ancient archetypes represented by astrology, tarot or what have you, it is easier to make sense of religion with our 21st century minds – seeing it in a much more poetic, harmonious way.

Our minds and modern thinking want to dissect, understand and have logical comprehension of our universe, whatever that truly means. Where the ancient mind was much more satisfied with the poetic description of things they didn’t understand, we now draw a left-brained conclusion and compare to that to the paradigm we’ve developed in our objective thinking methods. This is good – I’m not trying to go retro – but there are many things that are “right-brained” centered that make up the fullness of life and we as a society need to honor and respect that. If we don’t, we fall prey to cynicism and disillusionment.

I found that allowing poetry to describe life from time to time adds balance and harmony to my existence. Those feelings of mystery and wonderment are the intangibles in life that make it worth exploring. Accepting many different deities in one’s life enriches us to the understanding that the universe is broad and diverse. Its an exciting place full of deities.

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The Sidhe, aka Faery Folk of Celtic Lore

“For all the hillside was haunted

By the faery folk come again

And down in the heart-light enchanted

Were opal-coloured men”

republished from http://celticsociety.freeservers.com/sidhe.html


The Sidhe (shee) are considered to be a distinct race, quite separate from human beings yet who have had much contact with mortals over the centuries, and there are many documented testimonies to this. Belief in this race of beings who have powers beyond those of men to move quickly through the air and change their shape at will once played a huge part in the lives of people living in rural Ireland and Scotland.

It is difficult to pin-point an exact historical era as the time when fairy lore began. Many writers maintain that the people of Ireland and their Gods before the coming of the Gaels are the ‘ancestors’ of the sidhe.

Clearly the belief in the sidhe is part of the pre-Christian religion which survived for thousands of years and which has never been completely wiped out from the minds of the people.

When the first Gaels, the sons of Mil, arrived in Ireland, they found that the Tuatha De Danaan, the people of the goddess Dana, already had control of the land. The sons of Mil fought them in battle and defeated them, driving them ‘underground’ where it is said they remain to this day in the hollow hills or sidhe mounds. In the early Irish manuscripts (which were recorded from an earlier oral tradition) we find references to the Tuatha De Danaan.In ‘The Book of the Dun Cow’ and the ‘Book of Leinster’ this race of beings is described as “gods and not gods”, pointing to the fact that they are ‘something in between’. Also in the Book of the Dun Cow it says of wise men that: “it seems likely to them that they [the Tuatha De Danaan] came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and excellence of their knowledge”.

The hold that the Tuatha De Danaan had on the Irish mind was so strong that the new religion of Christianity could not shake it. In ‘The Colloquy of the Ancients’ a dialogue which supposedly took place between St. Patrick and the ghost of Caeilte of the Fianna, Patrick is amazed to see a fairy woman coming out of the cave of Cruachan, wearing a green mantle with a crown of gold on her head.

Whereas the fairy woman is young and beautiful, Caeilte himself is old and withered. When Patrick enquires of this, Caeilte tells him that: “She is of the Tuatha De Danaans who are unfading… and I am of the sons of Mil, who are perishable and fade away”.

The sidhe of the subterranean mounds are also seen by the Irish as the descendants of the old agricultural gods of the Earth, (one of the most important being Crom Cruaich, the Crooked One of the Hill). These gods controlled the ripening of the crops and the milk yields of the cattle, therefore offerings had to be given to them regularly. In the Book of Leinster we discover that after their conquest the Tuatha De Danaan took revenge on the sons of Mil by destroying their wheat and the goodness of the milk (the sidhe are notorious for this even today). The sons of Mil were thus forced to make a treaty with them, and ever since that time the people of Ireland have honoured this treaty by leaving offerings of milk and butter to the Good People.

A notable feature of the sidhe is that they have distinct tribes, ruled over by fairy kings and queens in each territory. It would seem that the social order of the sidhe corresponds to the old aristocracy of ancient Irish families,which is in itself a reflection of the ancient Celtic caste system.

It is interesting to note that many of the Irish refer to the sidhe as simply “the gentry”, on account of their tall, noble appearance and silvery sweet speech. They have their own palaces where they feast and play music, but also have regular battles with neighbouring tribes. The great fairyhosts seem to be distinctly Milesian, but there are still folk memories of perhaps older pre-Gaelic races and their gods, in the form of the ‘geancanach’, a spirit of Ulster, or the ‘cluricaun’,of Munster. We must not forget also the ‘leprechaun’, a diminutive creature who is said to know the whereabouts of a pot of gold hidden in local fairy raths.

The leprechaun could possibly be a folk memory of a dwarfish race of Fir Bolg people who lived in these raths before the coming of the Gaels.

A distinction is often made between the sidhe who are seen walking on the ground after sunset, and the ‘Sluagh Sidhe’, the fairy host who travel through the air at night,and are known to ‘take’ mortals with them on their journeys. There are also guardian sidhe of most of the lakes of Ireland and Scotland.

These distinct categories of sidhe beings ties in with the testimonies of seers who divide the sidhe into wood spirits, water spirits, air spirits and so on, the elemental spirits of each place.

Lough Gur in County Limerick is a very magical place where we meet many of the sidhe kings and queens of Ireland. The lake lies within a circle of low lying hills, but once every seven years it appears as dry land, where an entrance to the Land of Youth may be found. The lake’s guardian is known as Toice Bhrean (the lazy one) because she neglected to watch over the well, from which the lake sprang forth.It is believed that once every seven years a mortal meets their death by drowning in the lake, ‘taken’ by the Beann Fhionn, the White Lady.

L. MacDonald DALRIADA MAGAZINE 1993

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NCPPD Update and Happy Alban Elfed!

Dia Dhuit!

This year’s NCPPD was great and marked the first year that ALG had a presence at the event. Actually, we are the first and only Druid group to represent at the PPD festival here in Central NC! The event brought in $550 in cash and over 1 ton of food for the Raleigh Food Bank!

ALG had a steady stream of interested people stop by our booth both Saturday and Sunday. We had 50 people sign up for an email from us and already have had 5 or more join the meetup. Welcome newcomers! Thanks to Ailim for working the booth and Tommy for coming by and visiting too. It was great to have the crowd we had this weekend. On Saturday, I taught ‘Introduction to Druidry’ which drew about 20 people and was well received. Be sure to check out the meetup for pictures of our booth!

Not to be lost in the business of the week and weekend. As you already know, today marks the Fall Equinox aka Alban Elfed for the OBOD Druid Community. Burn some incense, do a meditation and go outside and enjoy the cool wet day in ritual! The harvest has been abundant in both food and rain here in NC and this would be a great day to give thanks to the gods and goddesses.

Nut Gathering at Alban Eve

High Summer breathes her final, burning breath as Father Sun descends the western skies, and gathering clouds as gray as death
blend into the haze that over all now lies.

This Alban eve brings promise of relief with showers soon, with breezes cool and clear. And whether through conviction, or belief, I see Elfed’s presence drawing near.

The ground is deep with fallen leaves and nuts of White and Red Oak, and of Beech, that line and fill the footprints and the ruts which all along the wooded pathway reach.

First claim, of course, to chipmunk and to squirrel for bleak mid-Winter sustenance belongs, as all around old leaves descend and twirl about, through feathered autumn songs.

Yet here and there on Mother earth I spy an Acorn, or a Beechnut left for me, for stringing, when the snow begins to fly, to decorate Arthan’s Sacred Tree.

by Oakwise Alban Elfed 1998

I’m rebuilding the Ritual group for ALG with the high hopes of conducting Samhuinn ritual on around November 1st. The goal would be to have at least 6 dedicated, committed path Druids (ones who identify as druids) to practice together and commit to being available at ritual time (within reason based on work etc). The commitment would be some memorization and about 3 hours of practice before November 1st. We would perform the ceremony for/with the rest of the grove, having the rest filling in around and participating as needed. My experience has been that not everyone is prepared to fill a direction or wants to be center of the ritual. To provide the best magical experience for the group we need people to step forward to take responsibility for this aspect of the Grove. If you are interested, please let me know by email and come to our October 6th meetup to discuss.

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NCPPD – Pagan Pride Day this weekend

ALG will have a booth this year for NCPPD and I’ll be teaching ‘Intro to Druidry’ on Saturday at 2.45 pm. I’m working hard to put together the flyers, booth setup and the workshop together in this final week. I do my most creative work when under a sharp deadline, so I expect only the best for folks coming to the booth and stopping by for the workshop!