Metaphysical Land Healing: A Druid’s Garden Guide

My last Druid Garden guide covered physical land healing, tied to regeneration, rewilding, permaculture, wildtending, and refugia gardening.  These are the practices that allow us to connect with the land deeply with our hands in the soil and love in our hearts. These are the practices where we plant trees, convert lawns into ecosystems, scatter native plant seeds, conserve and protect nature, and embrace our human role as caretakers and guardians of the living earth.  But there is also a lot of the time when we simply don’t have the ability to do physical land healing: for one, when the problem is larger than a single, specific place (such as drought, wildfire, deforestation, or other issues resulting from the Age of the Anthropocene), when the issues are on land that we don’t have control over, or when our bodies may not be able to do the hard physical labor of replanting and regenerating the land. But, my friends, this is where magic and ceremonies come in. This is where we turn to the old magical adage, “as above, so below, as within, so without” and recognize that even if we can’t do physical things, there are still things we can do to support and heal the earth.

I personally work on both physical and metaphysical levels–for example, we’ve been going through another drought this summer.  I can’t physically water all of the plants on our 5 acres (or in our broader region). I can’t even create water catchment systems like swales, rich soil, or hugelkultur beds for everything. But I can physically offer water to some plants and do ceremony for them, and then radiate that outward as a balm on the tired, hot, and dry land.  This Druids Garden Guide offers an overview of all of my writings on this topic. For the most comprehensive overview with much revised and new content, consider reading my book Land Healing: Physical, Metaphysical, and Ritual Approaches for Healing the Earth from REDFeather (2024).  You can also join my Land Healer’s Network and connect with others who are doing this work. We have quarterly calls and share information with each other to support and nourish the earth.  For more on the different kinds of land healing, you can see my first land healing guide which offered the framework.

Metaphysical Land Healing: What and Why

Metaphysical land healing is my term to describe the many non-physical practices that humans can do to nourish, heal and protect the earth. When I mean non-physical, or metaphysical, these are actions that work on the different subtle energies present in our world and at the level of spirit.  As an animist, I recognize that all things have spirit: the entire earth, plants, stones, and trees, These include things like meditations, ceremonies, energy workings, and other kinds of magical workings.  They can be done by anyone and can be adapted from any different tradition–the tools and methods may be different depending on where you are coming from, but the outcomes are often the same.

The other part of this is powerlessness.  I think that as we move deeper into the Age of the Anthropocene, we are seeing the effects of human activity and human demands radically reshaping this planet (and not in a good way, generally speaking).  As we’ve been talking about here and in many other places, we feel powerless about these broader patterns that are happening.  We have to live in an age where we are witnessing so many things being lost, dying, drying up, being flooded away.  And sometimes there is nothing we can do physically to help these lands. But there is much we can do. In the human lands, we can decide what battles we are willing to fight – we can raise awareness on the impacts of climate change, we can encourage others to live regeneratively, and we can fight politically in the system.  And that’s work that some of us are really drawn to do.  And I’d argue that the other thing we can do is ceremony.  In many cases, that might be ALL we can do–but doing something is enough.  Doing something is more than most are doing. And furthermore, I believe that this ceremonial work is part of what helps us, as humans, vision the future and shift our own relationships and consciousness back to nature’s embrace.  So I believe in the power of metaphysical healing as one of a variety of approaches that we can apply for the problems and challenges of today’s age.

Land Healing Philosophies and Foundational Practices

A Druid’s Primer on Physical and Energetic Land Healing, Part I: An overview of how I conceptualize land healing, the different practices and definitions within this work.

Metaphysical Street Smarts: Why to Commit to Protective Rituals and Daily Protection: It all starts here.  Daily protection is the foundation of any land healing work.  Healing is hard. We often walk into places that are damaged, that are broken. These places may be angry or have other very disruptive energies.  We want to ensure that we are protected and are not taking on that kind of energy when we work.

The Work of Regeneration: Taking a Stand on Your Land: This is a philosophical piece that explores my own relationship with choosing to return to the very damaged, fracked, and polluted post-industrial landscape where I grew up and embrace the path of a land healer.  So much of this landscape has so much damage that while I do practice many forms of physical land healing, metaphysical land healing can be done also on a wider scale.

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing Part IV: The Process of Unfolding: This post offers more preliminaries to land healing–deep listening and trust building.  You can’t necessarily just show up and start sligning energy around–you want to build trust and listen first. You want to be a partner with the living earth in land healing, not assume you know best.  Humans don’t currently seem to have much wisdom, let’s let nature know best and take her lead!

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part III: Understanding “Energy” and the Three Currents: What is energy? How do we work it? In what ways? This post explains some of that–which is helpful if you want to direct energy toward a particular tree, plant, river, and so on.

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part II: Energetic Healing vs. Palliative Care: For ceremonial interventions and energy work, understanding the difference between when to raise energy and lower energy is a major consideration!

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part IX: Healing Our Lands Physically, Energetically, and Spiritually: More foundational writing on land healing, including exploring your ecosystem to understand broader patterns, working in rituals over the course of a year, and using blessings of the sun.

Land Healing: Distance Work and Levels of Connection:  How do you do land healing work at a distance? This article offers some suggestions!

Blessings, Protection, and Healing Ceremonies and Practices

I put these three practices together as they often go hand and hand, and very similar ceremonies and practices can be used for all three purposes.  On the side of blessing we are working to use ceremonies and energy work to bring abundance, balance, and fertility to the land.  The way I see protection is that we are working to protect the land from external negative influences or unbalance: shielding the land from logging, pollution, and other human extractive activities, but also extreme weather and climate-related events like droughts, fires, floods, etc.  Healing is working to regenerate the land after damage, and after I do healing, I always also do blessing and protection.  The following articles offer a range of different practices you can do: blessings, mandalas, working with different elements, and so forth.  I have tried to document a wide range of practices so there are options for you to consider and something that appeals to everyone!

Land Blessing Ceremony using the Seven Element (AODA) Framework: Here’s a general, all-purpose blessing and protection ceremony you can use that uses AODA’s seven element framework. This is one of my go-to ceremonies that I’ve used hundreds of times all over North America and beyond!

A Celtic Galdr Ritual for Land Healing: Here’s an example of a group ceremony I co-wrote some years ago to help support the Eastern Hemlocks’ fight against the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid.

A Fire and Smoke Ritual for Land Healing and Blessing: Another example of a nice ceremony for healing and blessing, this one using herbal smoke bundles!

The Healing Waters of Renewal – An Imbolc Personal and Land Healing Ritual: Another example of a healing ceremony, this one using water.

Working Deeply with Water: A River Healing Ritual: Where I live, many of our rivers are highly polluted from Acid Mine Drainage, and working with them is an important part of my land healing practice.

Druid Tree Workings: January Tree Blessings and Wassail for Abundance:  One of my favorite kinds of blessing and protection rituals is Wassailing!  Wassail for the good health of the land, and enjoy your cyder while doing so!

Nature Mandalas for Inner Work, Rituals, and Blessings: Another one of my favorite tools for land healing, blessing, and protection: creating small and beautiful mandalas from leaves, stones, sticks, seeds, shells, and other things found in nature.

Druid Gratitude Practices – Nature Shrines and Offerings: Nothing like bringing in the joy with shrines, offerings, and offering your gratitude!

Palliative Care and Dealing with Death

This section is the more difficult stuff–and this is the stuff that people often seek help for, when tree friends have been cut down, when there is death and suffering, often at the hands of ignorant humans. This is all part of land healing work too, and I suggest you balance this work with the blessing and protection work, above.  Staying in this space for too long can be damaging to you.  Being in that space for a little while is fine when you need to help your land.  I will also share that this kind of work is not for everyone–it can be very distressing.  If you are not in a healthy mental or physical state, if you are struggling just to make it through every day, I would focus on other kinds of land healing (the above, or physical land healing) and not go here until you are in a better place.

Rituals to Support Wildfires, Smoke, and Climate Change:  Some options for those who are dealing with wildfires and smoke.

Druidry for the 21st Century: Psychopomping the Anthropocene: The sixth mass extinction event on the planet is underway–this means that while human life is exploding, non-human life is being destroyed at a very high rate.  If you get into land healing, you will experience this, and I’ve written about some tools you can use to do what you can.

Holding Space and Helping Tree Spirits Pass. Having a dear friend cut down is one of the hardest things for many of us–here are strategies to help.

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part VIII: Rainbow Workings and Other Palliative Care Strategies for Damaged Lands: Bringing out the big magic to deal with severe land damage like mountaintop removal and strip mining!

Land Healing: Ritual for Putting the Land to Sleep: This is a technique I developed as a land healer after being called to sites that were slated for destruction: new “development” (e.g. the beautiful marsh turning into a Walmart), mountaintop removal, pipelines, logging, and so on.  I actually find this to be one of the hardest things to do as a land healer out of everything because it is so hard to go into a beautiful place and know that it will soon be irreparably harmed.  This is a technique to address these challenges.

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part VI: Working with Sites that Will Be Destroyed: More on the same topic with additional suggestions like working to preserve the genetic legacy of the land, sleep rituals, shrines, and bringing in hope.

A Druid’s Primer for Land Healing, Part V: The Magic of Witnessing, Holding Space, Apology, and Remembrance: Sometimes all that we can do is hold space. But that is such important work to do. Stand with your land in dark times!

Drought Workings: A Druid’s Perspective on Drought and Dry Weather: Drought has become a common experience here in Western PA, and so I’ve started to develop a range of ritual techniques to helping hold space for the land during the drought.

Caring for the Land Healer

I have witnessed so many people–myself included–break in the face of these growing climate crises and mass extinction.  It is hard to be alive.  It is even harder to choose to look, to do something, to not bury your head in the sand. The last section–death, destruction, damage–is really hard to deal with. It can cause severe mental duress.   And so, because of all of this, I would argue that another fundamental principle of land healing is care for ourselves.  Making sure we have time to process, to grieve, to heal and to be strong again.  I find myself going through cycles of land healing–I do a lot and then I take a rest (sometimes months of a rest) before I am ready to tackle more problems again.  I see myself going through a season and cycle–for me, land healing mostly happens in the light half of the year, and I rest and regenerate in the dark half (sometimes I do small healings in the dark half, but nothing too major unless it is very much needed).  Here are some ideas for you to work towards nourishing the spirit, self-healing, and self-care.

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part VII: Self Care and Land Healing: A wide range of suggestions for how to care for yourself when you are engaged in land healing, especially some of the more challenging aspects.

Herbal Grief Ritual for Healing of the Soul: Grief is a natural part of life, and maybe now, it is growing in intensity as so many of us are grieving the losses to our ecosystems, our weather, and our balance.  Here’s a ritual that can help you heal.

The Druid Retreat for Spiritual Work and Healing, Part I: Why We Go on Retreat, Preparation, and Herbal Allies: An extremely important part of my own self-care is going on regular retreats–this is where I take some time to rest, heal and go on retreat.  I always do a January retreat of 10 days where I go dark (see post below).  I also try to do 2-3 other shorter retreats during the year.

The Druid Retreat for Spiritual Work and Healing, Part II: What to do During Your Druid Retreat: How to structure your retreat, ease into your retreat, and enjoy yourself.

An Approach to Spiritual Retreat and Rejuvenation: Going Dark Week: This is one of the most nourishing things I do for myself all year–go dark! Turn off the phone, media, even the lights and just be with myself, the spirits, the land and my creative practices (and my geese, never forget my geese, lol!)

Permaculture’s Ethic of Self Care as a Spiritual Practice:Another take on self care from the perspective of permaculture. This post explores self care and shows how principles from druid practice can help us engage in better self-care through the bardic arts, sitting quietly with plants, and celebrating the wheel of the year.

Life in the Anthropocene

I’ve been writing a lot on this topic lately because,  to be frank, things are getting worse and they are getting worse quickly.  I’ve been using writing and my spiritual practices to explore my own feelings and process those emotions. It is ok to feel, it is ok to feel a lot of different things, and its really ok to talk about it and share how you are feeling.  The world is changing and we are witnessing that change.  We all need space for processing.

Living with Climate Change: The many different lenses and responses I’ve felt as we’ve gotten deeper into climate change.

Reflections on Experiencing Climate Change and Processing the Grief of Experience: Probably one of my most raw and dark posts, I shared my fears and my own story, and encouraged others to share theirs.  It is important that we keep having conversations about what is happening to our world.

Herbal Supports for Dealing with Climate Anxiety: All of the above is challenging, so let’s turn to plants and nature to support us!  This post offers a comprehensive introduction to herbs for supporting our nervous system and stress management (adaptogens and nervines).

Life in the Extraction Zone: Complex Relationships of Livelihood and Land:  Some thinking and processing surrounding how people where I live embrace fracking and how I have a hard time with that.

Lines Upon the Landscape: Spiritual and Energetic Ramifications of Oil Pipelines and Fracking: I am not a fan of fracking and think it is one of the most malicious and evil practices–and here I talk about why from a spiritual perspective.

Miscellaneous Writings on Land Healing

Love Letter to the Mountains: A letter I composed to my beloved Allegheny Mountains.

Building Sacred Landscapes: Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment of the World: I really think that one of the things that will help us solve the climate crisis is exploring the world through the lens of enchantment–how do we bring spirit back? How do we explore and embrace a metaphysical reality?  I start to tackle these ideas here.

Diary of a Land Healer: January: I sporadically write about land healing on our land…here’s one entry!

Diary of a Land Healer: March/April: A second entry!

Diary of a Land Healer: February: And here’s another entry! I should write more on this topic.

Conclusion

This body of work represents almost 20 years of thinking, practice, and exploration on these topics.  So much has changed since I began my quest to help heal and support the landscape around me, and I feel like while I know some things and have some tools, there is still so much to learn.  I hope that others will take up this work and share their own practices, and we can grow together, healing, protecting, and honoring this beautiful earth that we call home.

I would love to hear from you: what topics would you like to have me cover on land healing in the future? What questions do you have? What are the struggles and challenges?

Announcements

I’ll be taking a few week’s hiatus from the blog while I work in-depth on some AODA-related projects and books!  I’ll see you in later September with new blog posts!  Blessings–Dana.