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When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
~ Mary Oliver ~
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UNC opens to the spirit of Druidry

I had the wonderful opportunity to be Guest Lecturer last week at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I had an audience of 22 students in the art history seminar class ‘The Druids’ who have been learning about classical druidry (what we know of it) and their professor wanted to give the students an opportunity to get a modern perspective of how the druid inspiration lives on today in the 21st century.

Though I’ve spoken at a few Pagan Pride Day seminars and visited with countless interested people on druidry, I found this particular engagement to be quite challenging. This was the first group of people who a) were all between the ages of 18 and 20 years old; and b) not necessarily interested in modern druidry or spirituality at all.

I didn’t want to just talk history (yawn) and plus their professor had covered that thoroughly. I wanted to bring the ‘nature’ to the nature spirituality and I wanted to impress the magic available to them in a wonderful universe of mystery and discovery. I knew I’d first have to dispel the misconceptions – prep the canvas of sorts, before I could paint a new picture.

If the audience had any preconceived notions, they were being too polite to voice them. I started with my ice breaker, sharing a triad and asking when they believed it was written. A front row student guessed ‘during the early days of Christianity’ and I got a mercy chuckle from a girl at the back of the room when I said that I had wrote it myself last year.

We went through the druid path and I’m sure I painted a masterpiece that challenged the senses, rational mind and spirit deep with in them. We danced through augury, magic and herbal medicine; we even talked about ritual, ceremony and wheel of the year. It was wonderful, albeit silent.

After my lecture, the professor and 3 students came along for lunch and more discussion. I found this delightful that after an hour and 15 minutes, they hadn’t had enough. We talked more on their backgrounds and thoughts, celtic history and more nuances of the druid path that I had saved for the truly curious. It was a great experience and I was taken back by the politeness and attentiveness the entire group afforded to the subject and me personally.

The mark of a worthwhile discussion like that is if anyone gets something from it. In the end, opening minds, making things ‘main stream’ or less foreign is the goal. And with such young minds, only a couple degrees of refraction can create a rainbow of colors.

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Bardic Creations July 13 2011 Moot of ALG

During this evening program Ailim led the members through a poem creation exercise where we passed the pen to each person, building a poem. These are the two poems created by the grove.

Poem 1

Rain drops fall in the early dawn
landing lightly on the blades of grass
The wind’s beautiful song played like a faery’s touch
on the tips of my senses
Snakes work their way through the wetness in search of warmth
Crickets song heralds the Sun’s rise

Poem 2

A bright streak, a flash, an instant and the young Maple split
as the leaves speak to the wind
Birds take to wing
clouds part, winds rise, the Maple speaks
Taranis has spoken.

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ALG Druid Camp 2011

What a weekend!

I’m still just buzzing from the energy. We had a great turn out of folks at the camp on June 18th ‘011, 17 for the entire day with 9 staying over for the fun overnight. We had great lectures/seminars by Mike, Christina and 3 great subjects covered by Phaedra Bonewits. I think around 8 people got readings from Phaedra during the day and were able to buy a couple of her books too. We opened to a short meditation and Druid’s Prayer.

As everyone may have noticed in the pictures, we had our grove familiar (aka mascot) ‘Hoot’ the bobble-head owl overseeing the camp. Stephanie furnished the camp whistle in which he wears around his neck.. Mike was the first to raise awareness in his lecture of the crow connection in our camp.. we were receiving a few signs from the natural residents that were uncanny. I imagine that the critters, including squirrels were a little skittish having Hoot watching as well :-))

Phaedra illustrated that a) your energy body is ‘something’ and also can be easily felt through basic exercises, and b) that you can manipulate that energy body by actually detaching it from the physical. I have not had the energy body demonstrated quite that way and it made for a very interesting experience with alot of  ‘now, what can I do with this’ thinking.. especially in regard to ritual. The quote of the day was “Your mind can practice what it knows physically, but the reverse is not true” which simply means that actually DOING ritual work is incredibly powerful and you can meditatively do it after you’ve developed the experience. But how many of us read through the gwerse and say we’re doing the ritual in our ‘inner grove’ and taking the shortcut of not actually doing it for real? Powerful insight in basic magic…

The grove had lunch and relaxed with conversation, setting up tents etc. I tested out a dehydrated backpack meal.. Tasted ok, but only if you are without anything else.. Didn’t take me long to dig into all the other food that Steph, Ione and Marsha brought for the group!

In the afternoon we started with Christina who gave us an astrological overview of the energies we are experiencing. The peak of this energy is due to be at full force in early July – be sure to manage this and transmute it for a force of good in your life, avoid trying to bottle it up, as its a bit too powerful for that and may ‘pop’ out elsewhere if not handled with care!

Phaedra went through her next seminar on magical implements. This was really good in that it helped to ground our thinking on why we use and for what purpose – the focusing of the mind around 4 basic archetypes. Wands, swords, cups and shields – we matched them to natural occurring items and it made me more comfortable with them.. alot less foreign to the mind.

Everyone went for a swim in the lake to cool off – great sand, all the way out into the water… Wonderful camp area with easy access to the lake. Dinner was accompanied by heavy thunderstorms blowing into the area. We had heavy wind and I had a pine cone hit me on the head.. I need someone to interpret that for me please… and we scrambled to get items protected before rain hit. The wind died down and as we watched on an iPhone, we realized that the storm split and went around us to the north and south..

We got a few sprinkles during Phaedra’s ‘Life and Times of Isaac Bonewits’ talk around the fire pit. This was a moving biographical piece from Phaedra full of interesting pagan history, Isaac’s role in it and the tragic illness that Isaac went through before his death last year. The sprinkles of rain toward the end were very fitting and I dare say that they whole episode of a blustering entry of heavy winds, a knock on my head and the tears at the end made for a drama that only Isaac would have had the flair to devise! We had a great grill going that evening and by 8pm we were listening to celtic music by Tommy, Elaine and Tom. We got the fire going, went swimming a few more times to cool off and had a great drum circle. And I mean a great drum rhythm too! I think Awen’s Light Grove has figured out how to get a great drum circle happening and it would be worthy to polish that in over the coming months as we do our ritual work!

If you haven’t seen Tommy perform his songs, you’re missing out – we have some really great music talent and Tommy is definitely our Pendragon of Harmony.. Camp quieted down by Midnight, with the air cool and the Scotch gone. The s’mores all eaten (ask us about ‘s’more scotch’ its a new drink..) we hit the tents. Luckily Tom set a wake up call for 7.30am and we were all up to the sound of his car alarm.. :-)) We cleaned up, broke camp and ventured again into the world.

Solstice Blessings of Star and Stone to our Grove, the Community and the World.

Sundruid
Awen’s Light Grove

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Modern Day Experience with Air Elementals

I’ve always enjoyed flying, but it was this morning that I was so distinctly reminded of how exhilarating the experience is for my elemental Air sign of Aquarius.

I’m on a Delta flight sitting next to the door of the MD88 headed back to Raleigh. I’m reading deeply spiritual chapter of ‘The Salmon and the Spring’ by Jason Kirkey when I’m jerked back into the moment by the acceleration for take-off.

The door of this plane sounds as if the window is rolled down. It’s loud – like very loud. The scream of the engine startled me while almost instinctively I wanted to put my fingers in my ears. At the same time I was pushed back into my seat with an abrupt shove of force.

With only about a 40% load of passengers, the plane was designed to haul a lot more weight and today we are getting to experience the unbridled force of situational over-engineering.

As we thundered down the runway I took in the incredible drama of pure elemental air and fire. I could smell the fumes of kerosene while the deafening scream of the engines took us into a steep climb away from earth.

A poetic drama inspired by long dead creatures; perhaps a pterodactyl that never knew that she would be part of such incredible dance of elemental air wizardry millions of years in the future.