Spiritual journeys in tending the living earth, permaculture, and nature-inspired arts
Today, we are taking a walk through the sacred gardens at the Druid’s Garden Homestead. There are so many lessons to learn with a simple walk in a beautiful garden. Today’s Lughnasadh garden walk reminds us of the power of …
Often, working as a land healer is very local work: you work with the plants, animals, bodies of water, insect life, and many other aspects of life that are nearby to you. Depending on where you live, this is often …
When people think of the Tarot, they often think of its primary use as a divination tool. Tarot is an incredibly versatile tool, and now you can get hundreds of decks on practically any theme, choose from dozens of books …
Peace is a fundamental part of the druid tradition. The ancient druids had roles as peacemakers and justices, and today, many druids find themselves in a position of promoting and fighting for justice and peace. A lot of this work …
By Dana O’Driscoll, The Druid’s Garden Blog (thedruidsgarden.com), Copyright 2020. The Ogham is an ancient alphabet, used to write early Irish and later Old Irish. The inscriptions that survive of Ogham, some 400 or so primarily on stone, are found …
Ancient peoples set standing stones in various places in the world. In places, such as in the British Isles or Iceland, you can still often find these standing stones, trilithons, stone circles or stacks of stones. While their many uses …
The unfolding of the bramble ferns in the spring always feels, to me, like the unfolding of worlds. The tightly packed fronds, formed at the end of last season and dormant all winter, slowly emerge, uncurling so slowly that you …
The property was almost perfect: in the right location, a natural spring as a water source, a small and nice house with a huge hearth, areas for chickens and gardens, a small pond, and a stream bordering the edge of …
Walking into a sacred garden is like walking into another world, one full of joy, happiness, and wholeness. Fruit hanging from happy branches, plants coming up from all angles inviting a nibble, a taste, a touch. The pathways spiral and …
Ecological succession is nature’s approach to healing. From bare rock, ecological succession allows forests to eventually grow. Ecological succession has much to teach us as a powerful lesson from nature, and it is a particularly useful thing to meditate upon …
One of the strengths of AODA druidry is our emphasis on developing what Gordon Cooper calls “wildcrafted druidries“–these are druid practices that are localized to our place, rooted in our ecosystems, and designed in conjunction with the world and landscapes …
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 …
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. …
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 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 …
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, …
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 …
” 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 …
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 …
“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 …
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 …