Spiritual journeys in tending the living earth, permaculture, and nature-inspired arts
Perhaps the first thing to think about in any system of spiritual or magical practice is the way in which a practice offers a framework to understand reality. These frameworks vary widely based on the spiritual tradition: some use a …
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 …
As I write these words, fires are ravaging Australia. It’s a bleak situation, ecologically and politically. The firest at this point are about the combined size of the entire state of West Virginia and are all through the entire continent, …
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 …
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 …
Here, in the center of our camp, the sacred fire burns. This fire is tended for the four days we are together, never being allowed to go out. This is an ancestral fire, and all of us at the Mountaincraft …
In a meadow under the summer sun, a group of dancers laugh and fling mud. Beneath their feet, clay, sand, and water become mixed together, creating a sticky earthen blend that sticks to their feet, their legs, and, after some …
Connecting with the earth can mean a lot of things–and today, I want to talk through how to create a simple building material that can be used for a wide variety of purposes: cob. Cob is an ancient building material …
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. …
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 …
The sun’s rays come over the horizon, on the solstice, the most sacred of days. The solstice goes by many names, the day of high light, midsummer, Alban Hefin. Across the globe and through time, it has been celebrated since …
How many times have you seen your neighbors getting tree work done or had tree work done yourself? The landscape company often comes with the big wood chipper and truck and then, after cutting up the wood, hauls that beautiful …
When I walk along the landscape here, I am greeted with the deep oranges and yellow oxides of our soils laden with heavy amounts of clay and iron. These colors are reflected each time I dig into the subsoil, and …
A few years ago, I led a smoke cleansing (smudge) stick making workshop at the OBOD’s East Coast Gathering event. As that event often has upwards of 100 attendees, I spent months growing and harvesting materials for the event so …
The tiny sparks from my flint and steel shower down on my char cloth. This flint and steel set was a gift from a fellow druid from almost a decade ago, a gift that has long offered me a connection …
A druid’s crane bag is a special bag, a magical bag, that many druids carry with them. Often full of shells, rocks, magical objects, feathers, stones, Ogham staves, representations of the elements, ritual tools, and much more, a crane bag …
One of the incredible things about the hydrologic (water) cycle on our great planet is how connected these cycles are and how a single drop of water may continually travel the globe over a period of time. The waters that …
In the druid tradition, water represents the west, the place of emotions and intuition, the place of our ancestors and of the honored dead. Water is often connected with the salmon of wisdom, the salmon who dwells in a sacred …
All of the potential and possibility of the world is present in a single seed. That seed has the ability to grow, to flourish, to produce fruit and flowers, to offer nutrition, magic, and strength. Seed starting offers us a …
Creating homemade smudge sticks with local ingredients is a wonderful activity to do this time of year. As the plants die back, you can harvest whatever you aren’t using for other purposes and create a number of beautiful smudges that …
A flower floats in a bowl of spring water under the sun. The drops of the resulting water contain the energetic signature of the flower; a bit of its essence and spirit. A few drops of this medicine, taken with …