Dana O'Driscoll

Dana O’Driscoll has been an animist druid for 20 years, and currently serves as Grand Archdruid in the Ancient Order of Druids in America (www.aoda.org). She is a druid-grade member of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids and is the OBOD’s 2018 Mount Haemus Scholar. She is the author of Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year through Earth-Centered Spiritual Practice (REDFeather, 2021), the Sacred Actions Journal (REDFeather, 2022), and Land Healing: Physical, Metaphysical, and Ritual Approaches for Healing the Earth (REDFeather, 2024). She is also the author/illustrator of the Tarot of Trees, Plant Spirit Oracle, and Treelore Oracle. Dana is an herbalist, certified permaculture designer, and permaculture teacher who teaches about reconnection, regeneration, and land healing through herbalism, wild food foraging, and sustainable living. In 2024, she co-founded the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism with her sister and fellow herbalist, Briel Beaty. Dana lives at a 5-acre homestead in rural western Pennsylvania with her partner and a host of feathered and furred friends. She writes at the Druids Garden blog and is on Instagram as @druidsgardenart. She also regularly writes for Plant Healer Quarterly and Spirituality and Health magazine.

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18 Comments

  1. Reblogged this on Blue Dragon Journal.

    1. Thanks for the reblog!

  2. I hope that you and other Druidical/Pagan people are aware of how much good you may do without ever knowing about it. I will never forget the experience of walking through woods and clearings in a beautiful and unfamiliar place, already a sacred experience, and coming across a small stone circle clearly built with intention and love. The joyful rush of numinous love that filled me is not something that that I will forget, and it continues to influence my choices about my own landscape and protecting the natural world. Blessings on the people who made it, and everyone who makes sacred space in the natural world.

    1. This is an amazing story! I, too, once came upon a stone circle in the middle of the woods. Two friends and I were hiking when we spotted it. We ended up doing some ritual and meditation there–it was such an incredible experience!

  3. I so much agree with you! Thanks for this great post. Seeing the earth and land as sacred is so obvious to some of us and yet so strange to main stream culture. I think having a vision of what we want as opposed to just fighting against what is happening is the key to a better future. Thank you again Dana for writing about such important ideas. Together we can vision a better, enchanted world.

    1. Kevin, thank you so much for reading and sharing. I think its hard to live in the place of tension–seeing the land as so sacred when so many don’t seem to see or care about it at all! Blessings!

  4. I’m all about this! We do need good, connected, proactive work to do. It’s too easy to become trapped in reactive mode. As druids, creativity is important in this way too!

    1. Thanks for the comment! And yes, connecting to creativity is so important!

  5. thanks for another nourishing post! Although the iron cage feels all too real.

    1. Yes, indeed it does. Stay strong!

    2. Indeed, it certainly does. Nature seems like a good antidote 🙂

  6. […] so, the slow vibration of matter will be there when you get back, I promise. In a recent entry on A Druids Garden, Dana speaks of the disenchantment of the world and how cultivating a sense of magic has the […]

    1. Thank you for the link 🙂

  7. Reblogged this on Thesseli.

  8. Hello , i was just wondering if you think it’s possible that the gods and celestials can choose/call someone to their sacred place, as in somehow purchase the land/property for said person to live and work with the divine/them ? Or if you have ever heard of this ? X
    Thankyou dawn xx

    1. Hello Dawn, thanks for reading and your question! I think that many things are possible, and certainly, there are stories of this happening. For example, the famous ecovillage, Findhorn, was built after its founders connected with the plant spirits in the area and were told to build. My suggestion is that if you are getting a message that this is powerful, I would work to confirm it. Ask for additional signs, and perhaps, have someone else with divination skill also do some divination work. We are called to places for many reasons. Blessings!

  9. Dana, this post hit home today. I wrote a post on the AODA forum this evening about my wotk with a group of kids, a one week holiday project I lead every year. These kids know do much about scientific stuff but many have never heard a fairytale or any imagination when it comes to spirits in the natural World. I was wondering tonight if this is just sonething I have to accept or if I should try and continue with the re-enchantment of the natural World. The arguments are simply missing when poeople, be it kids or adults, seem to have no connection to anything spiritual.

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