As I shared a few weeks ago in my land healing framework post, the forest that I grew up in is having a big chunk cut out of it to make way for a septic line, a 40-60′ cut that …
Land Healing: Ritual for Putting the Land to Sleep
Druid
A Framework for Land Healing
In the next few months, the forest that I grew up in is going be cut and torn up to put in a septic line. A 40-60 feet path, at minimum, will rip a tear through the heart of it. …
Taking up Land Healing as a Spiritual Practice
Sometimes, spirit offers you a call and its a call that can’t be ignored. Part of the reason I write so much about working physically and energetically with land healing on this blog is that its clear to me now …
Imbolc Symbolism for the North Eastern US: Reflections on the Landscape
Imbolc was traditionally a Gaelic holiday celebrated in the holiday celebrating the first signs of spring. When I first started down the path of Druidry, I never felt very connected to Imbolc as a holiday because there seemed to be …
Cycles of Nature, Cycles of our Lives: Allowing for Fallow and Abundance in Spiritual Studies
Preamble: Now that I’m the Grand Archdruid of AODA, starting in 2020, I will be doing one AODA Druidry-based post a month. A lot of my posts are already tied with AODA practices as it is my core spiritual practice, …
Rituals for Extinction and Honoring Extinct Species
In the Anthropocene, many things are dying at a rate unprecedented to human history. Currently, 75 % of the world’s life is endangered, and 50% of life in the world has disappeared since 1970 due to human activity. I’m not …
A Tree for Year Challenge
One of the most common questions that people ask when they start down a druid or other nature-based spiritual path is: how do I connect deeply with nature? Connecting to nature can happen in a wide variety of ways. It …
Sacred Dreaming at the Winter Solstice
” When the body is awake the soul is its servant, and is never her own mistress. … But when the body is at rest, the soul, being set in motion and awake … has cognizance of all things-sees what …
A Bardic Sigil Technique
I open up a sacred grove with intention. After opening the grove, I sit for a few moments, breathing deeply and centering myself. When ready, I pick up the chalk pastel and I allow the chalk pastel to move across …
The Bee and the Machine: Moving Beyond Efficiency and towards Nature-Centeredness
Over the course of the last four centuries, the Western World has created a set of “unshakable” principles concerning the natural world: that nature is just another machine, that animals don’t feel and do not have souls, that plants and …
On Being a Minority Religion and Paths to Building Respect
“I’m sorry, I’m unavailable to meet on that day.” A pause, “well, why is that? This is an important meeting.” “Because it is a major holiday for me, and I am taking a personal day to celebrate it.” Another, longer …
Sacred Tree Profile: Black Locust’s Medicine, Magic, Mythology and Meanings
Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a spiny, scraggly tree that is found abundantly along the US East Coast. Very little is written about this tree from a magical or mythological perspective, although certainly, anyone who works wood or practices permaculture …
Awen, Bardic Arts, and the Ancestors
The time between Samhain and Yule is always a time of deep reflection for me. As a homesteader, this represents the end of the season– the first frost happened in the week I was drafting this post, making everything curl …
A Journey through the Senses: Breathe Deeply
Over the summer, I spent the weekend at a beautiful farm with my family for a family reunion. That land had gifted me, and all of us, much that weekend. I had found some stunning new stones for pigments, I …
How to Create Your Own Tarot or Oracle Deck for Personal Use
Ever since I self-published the Tarot of Trees, I get a fairly regular stream of people who are interested in creating their own oracle decks and want to know how to do it. So in today’s post, I’ll share …
Ancient Order of Druids in America
Dear readers, I’m taking a pause from my regular article-style blog posts this week to share some big news and do a bit of reflection. Last week, as of the Fall Equinox, I became the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient …
Using an Oracle or Tarot Deck to Establish Sacred Space
As some of you may know from my posts on Facebook and Instagram, in early 2020, I’ll be releasing the Plant Spirit Oracle as my second self-published divination deck (if you want to support the project, see link in the …
Earthen Nature Spirit Statues with Cob
A lifetime ago, myself and a dear friend dug some clay out of a hillside. We each took half of it. My half of the clay was used to form an earthen statue, a guardian statue, for that same friend …
Plastic Waste into Resources: Exploring Ecobricks as Building Tools
As I described in last week’s post, at least here in the US, we have serious challenges befalling us with plastic recycling along with a host of waste plastics that can never be recycled. A recycling infrastructure built almost exclusively …
The Tears of the Earth: A Hike on Sólheimajökull Glacier
It was our final day in Iceland before returning back to the US. We so many great experiences visiting this country of beautiful extremes, but more than anything, what we wanted to see on our last day was a glacier. …
Web of Life Ritual for Interconnectivity and Awareness
Last week, we delved deeply into a critical aspect of land healing with two related concepts; thinking about the world in terms of (eco) systems and the interconnectivity of those ecosystems for all life. Last week was practical, full of …