As my final post of 2024, I’ll be sharing a newsletter here. You can also sign up for my newsletter by clicking the “Newsletter” button on my website in the top bar.  I send this out 2-3 times a year as the Awen flows and I have fun things to share.

The Druid’s Garden Winter Solstice 2024 Newsletter

It has certainly been a busy and challenging year.  In this newsletter, I will share a few words on the season, review the major themes at the Druid’s Garden Year in Review, share some new artwork, and also share some updates for great things coming in January 2025–keynotes, mushroom courses, podcasts, and more!

Finally, this newsletter will serve as my final post for 2024.  As I always do, I will take a blogging and social media hiatus for 4-5 weeks and will return in late January 2025!

Thanks for reading and being a part of the Druid’s Garden.

A Druid’s Garden Year in Review: Keeping up Hope, Land Healing, and Joy

Wow, friends, 2024 has been a year.  A year of challenges and difficulty for so many of us, but hey, I’m grateful to be here with all of you, walking a path of healing and regeneration in the web of life.  I wanted to take some time this Winter Solstice to reflect.

The way that I think about my writings on The Druids Garden is that they are kind of like a web.  That is, I don’t have a huge list of weekly topics mapped out in a logical or cohesive order, but rather, I write about themes that arise in my own experience and spiritual work, in the mentoring and leadership experience I have as the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and in questions or requests from readers.  I have themes that emerge and that I explore from different angles and spiral in different directions: gardening, permaculture, druidry, creative arts, land healing, herbalism, and so forth. This approach means that I have themes I return to but I also allow myself to be open to where the Awen takes me and the kinds of messages I am receiving from spirit. Sometimes I write enough to turn it into a book like Land Healing or Sacred Actions but other themes are just here on this blog.

Because I have so many different posts on the Druid’s Garden (over 14+ years and over 600 posts), this year I started to create Druid’s Garden Guides. They are basically like a free book–an online resource with my posts on a theme, annotated in a good reading order.  This year, I created five such guides:

• Herbalism and Magical Herbalism
• The Medicine, Magic, and Spirit of Trees
• Land Healing: Physical Land Healing, Regeneration, and Permaculture
• Land Healing: Metaphysical Land Healing, Rituals, and Practices
• Thriving in the Age of the Anthropocene: A Guide to Surviving, Visioning, and Caring in this Age

Next year, I envision a number of additional guides: Gardening and Homesteading, Druidry and the Druid Path, Plant Spirit Communication and Work, Animism, Creative Arts and the Awen, and maybe some others.

A major theme I wrote about in the last year feels like the most pressing: living and thriving in the age of the Anthropocene and the hope, visioning, and care we need to bring right now to help us all respond and build a better paradigm and world.  That last guide covers those topics. It is hard to be awake and alive right now, but by sharing, coming together, and developing tools, we will continue to thrive and bring light to this dark age.  I think that all of us feel the world spiraling down and it is a hard time to be here.  But we are here, together, hand in hand, and supporting each other. Toward that end, I compiled all of my writings on the topic, which can be found in the above guide. And by all means, keep on building refugia!

I think a big part of thriving today is finding our own joy, whimsy, and kindness.  So as much as I wrote about the challenges of this age, I also encouraged us all to engage in co-creative acts with nature, engage in small acts of kindness and care towards nature, to embrace a whimsical life, and to create intuitive and spontaneous rituals in nature and to make kindness and care central in our lives.

With that said, I also have offered some deeper explorations about the druid tradition and druidry, including creating my Beginner’s Guide to Druidry about a year ago (stay tuned for an “Intermediate Guide to Druidry” in 2025!) and also deepening my discussion of the druid paths and how to braid them together.

Artwork from my Herbalism Project

The practice of herbalism–of using plants, trees, and mushrooms as well as holistic approaches to heal our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits–feels more important and critical than ever before.  For one, herbalism is a wonderful way to embrace many of the core aspects of being a good human in relationship with nature: you are wildcrafting a relationship between yourself, your body, the plants, and the spirits of nature. For two, people are going through so much right now, and herbal supports can truly help people thrive in this challenging age.  For three, we can weave herbalism into existing druid practices in meaningful ways. These ideas have also really come into focus for me through the co-founding of the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism at the Spring Equinox of this year. We’ve had a wonderful first year at the school and it has really affirmed to me how much herbalism, plant-based healing, and reciprocal nature connections are coming into focus for people right now.

And so, in the last two months, a new art/writing project has started to flow out of me–a fully hand-written, illustrated guide to herbalism with an emphasis on ethical, care-based interactions. The goal will be helping people  learn or deepen the core techniques for working with plants and mushrooms for healing.  This will include ethical harvesting, holistic health and herbalism, traditional western energetics and herbal actions, and many different plant preparations, plus some spiritual relationship building–basically, it is the kind of herbalism I practice and teach. My current plan is to have a full color version and a coloring book (and I have some of the completed pages of each below). I’m planning about 100 drawings, and I’ve got 20 currently sketched out, B&W, and about 8 done in full color. I’m loving the flow so far!

For this project, I’m inspired by the work of Alicia Bay Laurel’s Living on the Earth and the body of work that Eric Sloane produced–both of these authors/illustrators produced outstanding, unique, and engaging works bringing their writing and illustration skills together to share nature-focused lifestyles and teachings. (And, If you haven’t seen Alicia Bay Laurel’s Living on the Earth  or Eric Sloane’s A Reverence for Wood, then put those two books on your reading list!)  The other inspiration here is that I really want to embrace the “human” in human-created art.  I’m really feeling the need to create something entirely 100% by hand to share with you, as a balm to this age of AI where everything is a poorly generated substitute for real human skill and creativity.

So, here are a few parts of the new project!  I’ll be posting regular updates on the Druid’s Garden blog, especially on my new artwork page, as well as on Instagram.

And…here are some finished pages! Let me know what you’d like to see!

News and Offerings

I have some wonderful things planned for 2025!

THE BIG NEWS! October 2025 – ReVisioning: EcoSpirituality for the 21st Century.  My new book, co-authored with Nate Summers, is scheduled for release in October 2025. The book offers a bold new vision for nature spirituality by drawing upon both ancient, ancestral connections and visioning human-nature-spirit connections for a brighter future. We recognize that if humanity and nature is going to survive and thrive in the coming decades, we need to re-envision our entire approach to human life.  ReVisioning offers an in-depth guide for seven principles–what we call the 7R’s–to guide our relationship with the living earth: Reconnection, Respect, Rewilding, Regeneration, Resilience, Reenchantment, and Revisioning.  Our book offers a radical expansion of what is considered traditional nature spirituality, offering insights not only on ceremonies, practices, and spiritual cosmology but also in nature awareness, community building, creative experssion, and more. Through exploring human-nature-spirit connections in these seven themes, we offer new spiritual seekers and seasoned spiritual practitioners a roadmap for a 21st century nature spirituality through bard, ovate, and druid frameworks. This book also offers practices that create a brighter vision of the future, a vision where humans have repaired and explored a more balanced interaction with the living earth, rooted in the wisdom of our ancestors, and that creates a world in balance for future generations.

Nate and I spent many years writing this book, and we really look forward to having it out in the world.  I also crafted some pretty cool artwork for the book, which I can’t share yet but will in my spring newsletter :).

Medicinal Mushroom Online Two-Part Course– January 23 and March 6, 2025 – I have an online mushroom course scheduled through the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism.  This class is the result of many years of foraging for mushrooms, learning about their medicine, and working with various people to bring the healing of mushrooms into their life.  It is comprehensive and a great way to start or deepen your learning about mushrooms.

Other in-person Classes through the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism: I also have as well as in-person classes throughout the year in Indiana, PA.  Please see the details below for the mushroom course, or if you are regional to Western or Central Pennsylvania, please check out the full schedule.

OBOD Gulf Coast Gathering – Keynote Speaker – March 20-23, 2025.  I will be attending the OBOD Gulf Coast Gathering in Louisiana in March as the keynote speaker, talking on ““Crafting a Joyful and Enchanted Druidry with the Spirits of Nature.” An enchanted world is one that is alive, spiritually responsive, and magical. It is a world that is full of natural intelligence and spirits of the land who are yearning to rekindle our ancient ancestral relationships.In this workshop, we explore how to deepen and wildcraft an enchanted, joyful, and whimsical druid spirituality through direct work with the spirits of nature—especially our plant, mushroom, and tree allies. Participants will have an opportunity to learn and practice several techniques that can be used to re-enchant their connection with the living earth.

Podcast – Toward a Better Life
On Dec 20th, the new episode of the Toward a Better Life Podcast with Kevin Pennell will be released.  I had a wonderful conversation with Kevin, discussing many different aspects of druidry and the winter solstice.  You can check it out here after Dec 20!

And finally….A Presentation on Druidry and the Awen for the Society for the Anthropology of ConsciousnessI did a scholarly/druid hybrid talk for the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness in early December on the Awen.  In this talk, I actually got to wear both my hat as a druid and my hat as a social scientist, which was a lot of fun! I offered both an overview of the druid tradition and then in the bulk of the talk, explored how Awen ties to consciousness, flow states, and some scholarly research I’ve been working on.  Here’s a link to a recording of the talk!

In conclusion, I’ve been busy!  Thanks again for reading and supporting my work.  I’ll see you in mid to late January! 🙂