My last Druid Garden guide covered physical land healing, tied to regeneration, rewilding, permaculture, wildtending, and refugia gardening. These are the practices that allow us to connect with the land deeply with our hands in the soil and love in …
healing the land
Love Letter to the Mountains
I see you, beautiful, layered ridges of the Appalachian mountains: your peaks against the blue winter sky, the mist arises from the snow while the Imbolc sun comes out to warm you just enough. Below that, your frozen bones await …
A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Regeneration at Beltane
A druid walks upon a landscape, barren, cold, with trees cut and plants uprooted. Tears in her eyes, she surveys the damage that others have caused: the homes of so many animals disrupted after logging, the wild ramps and ginseng …
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 …
Building Soil Fertility with Fall Gardening at the Equinox
In the druid wheel of the year, we have three “harvest” festivals. Lughnasadh, the first harvest. So much of the garden produce starts to be ready at this time–and also at this time, the garden is still at its peak, …
A Druid’s Guide to Connecting with Nature, Part V: Nature Reciprocity
The principle of “seven generations” comes to us from the Iroquois nation, which is considered to be the “Great Law of the Iroquois.” This principle said that each decision that was made needed to consider not just the immediate future …
A Celtic Galdr Ritual for Land Healing
The following is a land healing ritual that we did at the OBOD’s Mid-Atlantic (MAGUS) gathering last weekend (May 2017). (For a wonderful review of this gathering, please see Dean Easton’s A Druid’s Way Blog!) This ritual was done by …
A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part IX: Healing Our Lands Physically, Energetically, and Spiritually
As I walk through my neighborhood in this quiet Pennsylvania town, I am struck by the contrast. On one hand, many of my neighbor’s lawns are monocropped with grass–one after another, green expanses stretch on and on. Dandelions are quickly …
A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part VIII: Rainbow Workings and other Palliative Care Strategies for Damaged Lands
I had the most amazing thing happen to me about a month ago, and it involved the direct (palliative) healing of an active strip mine site. I was heading to teach an herbalism course at a friend’s business about 15 …
A Druid’s Primer for Land Healing, Part V: The Magic of Witnessing, Holding Space, Apology, and Remembrance
Sometimes, the hidden, the unacknowledged hurts are the worst kind. These are the kind that you bury, deep within yourself, or that society pretends never happened. We hear stories of these every day–massive cover-ups of the truth of crimes being …
A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing, Part II: Energetic Healing vs. Palliative Care
In my post last week, I discussed the different ways that we might heal the land including physical land healing, healing human-land connections, and various forms of energetic healing. Today, I want to delve deeply into the aspects of energetic …
The Mystery of the Stumps and The Spiral Path: A Story of How I Became A Druid
Each of us has a story–a story of how we ended up doing what we do, believing what we believe, walking the path that we travel. These stories are often like richly woven tapestries, and I believe that there is …
Music, Growing, and Land Healing
I wanted to take this time to blog a bit about plants, healing energies, music–yes–music. I use music a lot in my gardening and spiritual work. I play a number of flutes, including the panflute, wooden bamboo flutes, and various …