This “Top 10” list draws together posts from 2019 only. Statistics come from the analytic tools WordPress provides. The list includes the first posts of four different series.
10. Seven Signposts Along Our Journeys (21 February 2019)
This post derives its inspiration and seven “signposts” from a reader comment. As the reader beautifully describes it, we’re at our best when we’re “magical, connected, generously giving …”
9. Working the Tool-kit: Part 1 (30 July 2019)
Because spiritual tools reflect the complexities and blending of states of human consciousness and awareness — that we shift from one state of consciousness to others all day long, generally without being aware of it, or doing so consciously; that we have often unconscious, preferred states; and that we often confuse states with each other, and insist we’re in one even as we’re in another — it can be helpful to examine spiritual tools according to the part that each of the Elements plays in their make-up and use.
8. Listening to Inwardness–1 (21 November 2019)
If one mythic image for the Summer Solstice is Stonehenge on Salisbury plain — “in the eye of the sun” — a corresponding image for Winter Solstice is the passage tomb of Newgrange, deep in the earth. Till time moves us back into the light. At both summer and winter turning points, the Light still shines. We just see it differently, one in plain day, the other in hidden night, the waking and sleeping of the awen-self, creative always, but often in different modes. You can feel the winter-you drowsing, while the summer-you longs to be up and doing. Sometimes you sense the tug between the two right down in your sinews and bones.
7. Old Druids, and New (19 September 2019)
Featuring a short video on what we know about ancient Druids, this post goes on to talk about what Druidry offers to anyone today:
Certainly in one sense no one ever needs to be or become a Druid to live such a life. The whole point of Druidry is that it is a set of wise practices and creative approaches anyone can try out and adopt, not a religious belief or doctrine to believe in.
But in another sense, especially as climate change, resource depletion, pollution, overpopulation and ravenous energy consumption will continue to challenge human creativity, we all need to be Druids: to live wisely in accord with the earth, neither tearing off our roof, kicking out the walls, excavating the foundation, or setting fire to the house we all live in.
6. Four Bad Ideas, and Some Alternatives (13 August 2019)
James Lovelock of “Gaia Hypothesis” fame celebrated his 100th birthday and published a book outlining his ideas for addressing climate change. Because I prefer to offer alternatives along with critiques, after a short video presenting Lovelock’s proposals, I attempt to do just that.
5. Druids and Death (11 May 2019)
I’ll let the article, a collection of impressions and insights, do its work.
4. Towards a Full Moon Ritual (19 May 2019)
After a kind of prose love-song to the moon, I offer twelve points to consider in ritual design — for a moon ritual, or any other kind. I also link to John Beckett’s blogpost on a similar topic.
3. Drafting a Druid-Christian Rite (12 February 2019)
Judging by the continuing readership for a group of posts here on Druidry and Christianity, the vital possibilities of such a concord live still for you as much as they do for me. They branch and grow, and rich fruit hangs from their boughs.
Our instincts aren’t wrong. The two traditions are twinned in ways we may never untangle, but we can explore what they can contribute to each other right now. One way to do that — certainly not the only way — is through ritual.
Already we hold hints and fragments in our hands.
2. Walking the Major Arcana, Part 1 (27 February 2019)
In another series of seven posts, I follow a classic Tarot interpretation of the Fool as the querent or seeker who journeys through the aspects and archetypes of the Major Arcana. And I’ll be writing from some perspectives I hope will be useful to Druid-Christian travelers along the Green Ways of Spirit.
1. Grail 1: Exploring the “Cauldron Sound” of Awen (19 January 2019)
To participate in even an echo of the cosmic sound is to begin to manifest some of its properties. Put myself in sympathetic vibration with it, and I discover its powers of transformation. It accomplishes change through vibration — no surprise, when we know that every atom of the cosmos vibrates at its own particular frequency. That’s also part of why every major spiritual tradition on the planet includes chant, song, mantra, spoken prayer. The whole thing sings. When the bard Taliesin exclaims in one of his poems, “The awen I sing, from the deep I bring it”, he points us toward the pervasiveness of awen, its habitation in the heart of things, its flow through us, both lesser and greater, as we sing, and bring.
As blogger and OBOD Druid Dana observes, “One of the most simple things to do is to invoke Awen regularly as part of your practice.”
“Strange Bloggeries”
The most “popular” post of all time on this blog (on the basis of total reader views) has just one “like”.
The second most “popular” post of all time, again by reader views, received twice as many views (703) this year as it did last year, and more than five times as many as when I first posted it two years ago (131 views). But strangely, not a single reader has ever left a comment, in spite of my requests in subsequent posts, so I continue to have scant idea why it’s engaged so many of you! The post runs all over the place, so it could be almost anything …
The last three years have seen a steady upward climb in readership, with this year the best yet. Thank you!
Once again I ask: please do let me know about any topics or angles you’d like me to tackle — or return to!
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A Druid Way 