Spiritual journeys in tending the living earth, permaculture, and nature-inspired arts
One of the questions that people who are yearning for a creative practice or who are starting one often ask–where do you get your ideas? Where do you find your inspiration? How do you have visions of what to create …
One of the things that the rise of AI has done is asked all people who create to really investigate the benefits of that creation, and weigh them with the potential efficiency of AI. For example, right now I’m about …
Walking through a sacred garden or a wild place always brings such joy; working with the herbs, drawing their wisdom, and seeing which herbs reach out for healing and health. Today, in honor of the upcoming Summer Solstice, I will …
A few weeks ago, we had the Mid-Atlantic Gathering of US Druids (MAGUS 2023). This gathering has been going on since 2017, and it seems like every year gets better! Since the start of MAGUS, we have been experimenting with …
In the last three posts in this series, we explored spirit journeying: preliminary and preparatory work, connecting with a spirit journey guide, and establishing your inner grove. All of these things were meant to set you up for the journeys …
In the last two posts, we explored the preliminaries for spirit journeying: the preliminaries such as addressing issues like safety, believability, focus, and visualization and also doing an initial journey to find a guide that can assist you as part …
Walking in the world with spirits, journeying with them, and experiencing their teachings is a tremendous way to deepen your own spirituality and connection to nature. In the druid tradition, we primarily focus on relationships to nature, so spirit journeying …
There is a growing movement of people reconnecting to nature through the foraging and creation of wild pigments–pigments from the earth allow us to connect, grow and heal. This is so much more than foraging for colors from nature to …
The average human being will sleep approximately 229,961 hours over the course of their life. Dreaming, including working on dream recall and lucid dreaming, can offer us gateways to cultivating a rich inner life and in supporting our spiritual and …
What do Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory (the painting with the melting clocks), Elias Howe’s invention of the lockstitch sewing machine in 1845, and the Beatles’ song Yesterday, have in common? They all were ideas that first emerged in dreams. …
One’s spiritual journey is full of so many twists and turns, particularly if you are taking up the druid path. Druidry is a path that really focuses on individual relationships with the living earth, and thus, you will find a …
A person walks into a garden at as the sun rises. As it is the spring equinox, the soil is still mostly bare, although the stinging nettles are peeking through the earth to enjoy the first of the morning rays. …
The Fall Equinox is a time of no time, a time of balance between the night and day, of balance between the physical and metaphysical. Thus, it is a good time to seek balance and communion with the spirit world, …
Once you begin walking the path of nature spirituality, things begin shifting. A tree is not just a tree, an insect is not just an insect–they are beings in their own right, with stories to share, lessons to offer, and …
One of the most important things we can do to address the challenges of today’s age is to build authentic, lasting, and meaningful nature-based relationships and spiritual practices that are localized to our own ecosystems. We can build deep connections …
In the western esoteric traditions, and traditions tied to them, like druidry, initiation is a powerful method of transformation and energetic work. While features of initiation and their overall goals vary widely by tradition, many initiations do follow some basic …
Intentions are powerful things. They allow us to shape our force of will and set a path forward. They help us figure out what our own goals are. And I think because of that, we often see them as very …
As with any spiritual path, the question of how we build knowledge, what we believe, and where that knowledge comes from is important. I think it is particularly important to druids as we have so few fragments of the Ancient …
Perhaps now more than ever, the idea of taking regular retreats is a critical one. Last week, in my post on the Winter Solstice, I shared the deep need for restorative activities that allow us to heal, process, and deepen …
The time of the greatest darkness is upon us at the winter solstice. Each morning, the sun seems to struggle to rise and hangs low in the sky. The world is covered in frost, cold, and snow, and the darkness …
Many of us on the path of nature spirituality grow close to trees–so very close. What happens when a tree that you love dearly, who is a good friend and mentor–tells you that it is time to go? In this …