I’ve had the blessing of a few really great mentors in my life, people whose teachings and support are valuable to my development as a person, druid, and human being. Few have been as impactful as Sara Greer. Many of …
Honoring a Mentor and Friend
aoda
Introducing the Bard, Ovate, and Druid paths of the Druid Tradition
In most modern druid orders, we honor three expressions of the druid tradition: the path of the bard, ovate, and druid. I began talking about these last week in my Beginner’s Guide to Druidry post last week. These three paths …
Metaphysical Street Smarts: Why to Commit to Protective Rituals and Daily Protection
In the physical world, you learn how to protect yourself. For someone who lives in a city, this may mean things like knowing how to cross the street safely so you don’t get hit by a car; learning how to …
Daily Rituals: Core Practices for Druids
Daily practices form the foundation of any nature-based spiritual or neopagan path. Daily practices give us a chance to dedicate regular time to our spirituality, to slow down and connect with nature, to protect ourselves from the daily energetic onslaught …
Wildcrafted Druidry: Using the Doctrine of Signatures, Ecology and Mythology to Cultivate Sacred Relationships with Trees
Nature spirituality is most obviously tied to one’s local nature–the trees, plants, animals, landforms, and other features of what makes your own landscape unique. One of the formidable challenges before those of us practicing nature-based spiritualities in the United States …
Deepening the Wheel of the Year and Wildcrafting Druidry
What is amazing about this wonderful planet we live on is the diversity of ecosystems, weather, climate, and life. This diversity, however, can be challenging for those looking to adapt druidry or other nature-based spiritual practices to their practices. Particularly …
Creating Individual or Small Group Rituals: A Step by Step Guide
Rituals are not just an important part not just of druidry or of nature-based spirituality, but of human life in general. According to leading scholar Catherine Bell in her book Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, human beings have been involved in …
Pattern Literacy: A Guide to Nature’s Archetypes
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 …
Wildcrafting Druidry: Getting Started in Your Ecosystem
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 …
Land Blessing Ceremony using the Seven Element (AODA) Framework
Last week, I provided an overview of AODA’s seven-element system. I have worked with this system as my primary magical and energetic practice for almost 15 years and have found it to be an extraordinarily flexible and engaging approach to …
The AODA’s Seven Element System: Above, Below, Within, Earth, Air, Fire, Water
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 …
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, …
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 …
Working Deeply with Water: Waters of the World Shrine and Sacred Waters
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 …
Collaborative and Community Created Rituals without Set Scripts
One of the questions that many druids face, particularly if they are working in a group of any size, is how to plan a good ritual. A ritual that is meaningful, powerful, moving and engaging to all participants. I’m sure …
Druid Tree Workings: January Tree Blessings and Wassail for Abundance
Deep, in the darkest months of winter, a variety of cultures offered blessings to the trees for abundant harvests. A few years ago on this blog, I wrote about Wassailing at a friend’s orchard; since then, I’ve done wassailings each …
Spiritual Practices to Finding Equilibrium in the Chaos: Grounding, and Flow through the Druid Elements
A tremendous amount of really difficult occurrences are happening in the world right now. It seems like the more time that passes, the more we balance on the edge. The edge of what exactly, nobody can say. But the edge …
A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part III: Understanding “Energy” and the Three Currents
This is the third post in my “Druid’s Primer on Land Healing.” The first two posts explored a framework for land healing, including physical and energetic approaches (in part I) and exploring the difference between “healing” and energetic alliterative care …
Getting Your Mushroom Eyes and Learning to Fully Observe Nature
Wild mushroom hunters have a term for how to see mushrooms in the forest–you need to get your “mushroom eyes.” This means that when I enter a forest with the intention of looking for wild mushrooms, I start paying attention …