[Updated 28 May 2020]
“Magical Properties and Benefits”, says the incense packet on my desk, and it then lists several qualities like “confidence” and “purification”, along with instructions to keep lit incense away from draperies, other flammable items, children, animals, etc. At the bottom, in small print, appears this brief notice: “Sold as curio only, no magical effects are guaranteed”.
The magic, as always, lies in our hands.
“Druidry”, says one book blurb, “puts you back in touch with wild wisdom”. It’s “a spiritual path, a philosophy, a way of life, or all three” says another. “It’s free and open to join”, proclaims a third.
Intrigued, you light your incense, meditate on these varied impressions of Druidry, and decide to visit the website of one of the better-known Druid orders. “You must be 18 years of age”, you read. “Basic membership is a one-time fee of $50”. Additional study has additional one-time fees. Startled, you decide to check out the websites of a few other Orders. The next one says “Register for free”. That’s more like it, you think. Nothing about a minimum age requirement, either. You’re interested in Bardic study, and click on the link. Then you see the words “course fee”, and discover it’s £150, (about $US 185 as of today).
On to the next site. This one lists an even higher price of £195 ($US 241). Free and open to join? you mutter to yourself.
One more site to investigate. Basic membership is $30 per year. OK, mostly doable, but definitely not ‘free’, you say to yourself. That includes the beginning training program required of everyone. But additional studies have additional costs. Interesting. So there’s a real range among orders. It’s worth investigating a little further to see what’s included for each of these outlays of your hard-earned money and time. Sometimes no other materials are required; sometimes you’ll need books not included in the Order course of study. Sometimes significant additional publications come your way for that fee.
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It’s possible, of course, to find materials for extensive Druid study for free, or very inexpensively. You can locate remarkable amounts of material online, many introductory titles can be found at larger libraries, or through interlibrary loan, used bookshops can supply many unique and valuable resources no longer in print elsewhere, and you can join online forums and talk with other Druids and ask for their recommendations and reviews. (Ask three Druids, goes the saying, get ten answers.)
One advantage of a well-designed study program is its structure: much of the work described in the preceding paragraph has been done for you. Knowledgeable teachers have developed a meaningful sequence of materials, broken them up into manageable pieces, identified helpful ways to access additional information, explore outer and inner worlds, and advise you on how to avoid dead-ends and get more for the time and effort you put in.
Study programs of the four established Druid orders I name on Books and Links have been developed by experienced teachers, field-tested, used by many, and continue to be updated and refined. None of them are for-profit ventures. Druidry isn’t a cash cow. Printing and mailing and electricity for website servers and even small offices cost money. Travel to events where we want to see and hear speakers and leaders and musicians also costs money. Advertising, permits, minimal secretarial staff to answer phones, field questions, etc. — all additional costs.
Going it alone is cheaper, and you do get what you pay for, in both good and bad senses.
Leaders of all four groups know of each other, and generally speak well of others’ groups. Some of them have studied in more than one of the groups themselves, and can “speak from within”. Choosing membership will link you to exclusive member forums, alerts you to member-only information and events, and affords you just as much community as you would like. Some people make life-long friends. Some prefer to remain solitary. Among other things, shared rituals unite members of an Order; it’s a distinctive flavour, like the u in the British spelling, or cinnamon and cloves and allspice in a pie. It’s a recognizable style. It’s the stone steps along a well-worn path, walked by people you know. It’s never, however, the “only” way to go.
But if cost, or a distaste for group-think or others’ maps of reality, or an eremitic temperament, or physical isolation or some other reason obtrudes itself, no worries. Your study can begin the moment you notice your breathing and pulse, or look out a window.
Begin where you are. That’s how all knowledge and civilization began. If you should reinvent the wheel on occasion, well, that can teach you things about wheels nothing else will. Your learning and experience will carry the stamp of firsthand engagement. People whose opinions are worth hearing will recognize the authority of any wisdom you accrue.
Thirteen Paths for Self-Directed Druid Study (in no particular order)
1 — Learn the trees and plants, birds and animals of your region. Seek and encounter them where they live, learn to recognize them in every season, observe them, meditate near them, ask them for insight, and keep studying. This by itself can be a lifelong project. Herbalism and healing, natural cycles and ecosystems, knowledge of subtle and less subtle shifts in habitat and non-human populations as climate change makes itself felt are all very worthwhile, and will only become more valuable in the ensuing decades.
2 — Draw up a reading list with the help of online websites, reviews on Amazon, the many free texts at websites like the extensive Internet Sacred Text Archive, and personal recommendations. Any good librarian can help you identify basic titles to explore almost any topic. Set yourself a study calendar that you can follow, read what interests you, check bibliographies of those same books for other titles on specific topics that interest you, and you’re off. Druids, and Pagans generally, are definitely readers, and independent lifelong learners.
3 — Master a musical instrument — this includes the human voice — and if you feel inclined, compose new music that expresses your experiences. Humans enjoy a truly enormous musical heritage, and more and more music (and training in music) is available online for free, or for a reasonable price per song or composition or class.
4 — Learn another language that will help open up cultural communities and wisdom, practices and traditions that intrigue you. Many study a Celtic language, or you may have an ancestral connection to other cultures and languages, and here again the internet can help smooth your path, and aid you in finding resources, chat rooms, and ways to practice even if you live many miles and kilometers from the nearest speaker.
5 — Study the magic and traditions of another religion or spiritual path besides Druidry. This can be a valuable source of breadth and perspective when studying and understanding your own tradition, and it allows you an independence of thought not easily acquired in any other way. Insofar as you can do this respectfully, take part in the rituals and celebrations of the other tradition, ask questions, get to know the local community, and volunteer your help if it would be welcome.
6 — Seek out a deity whose stories, focus, symbolism, traditions and ritual speak to you. The deity may have called you, or you may be looking for a patron god or goddess. Or you may simply find it worth knowing more about the deity. Your level of engagement is a matter for you and your inner guidance, not a prescription or any kind of requirement. Nor is belief — encounter outweighs dogma.
7 — Study and practice with a set of symbolic elements. The classical four elements of European tradition, earth, air, fire and water (or five, with Spirit), have much to teach, and pervaded culture, myth, religion and science for over a thousand years, and still reverberate; other elemental symbolic systems have exerted similar influence. The four Orders I mentioned above make substantial use of these, and direct students to still other resources.
8 — Study a system of divination. More than one, if you’re so inclined, for the same reasons more than one of almost anything is worth knowing. What do you discover over time with regular practice? What would you teach another person? What remains largely unteachable? Runes, Tarot, ogham are just the beginning. Feeling constrained? Devise your own system of divination! Test it!
9 — Take up the study and practice of a system of sacred geometry. Though it’s fallen largely out of sight in the West, it remains alive and well in other parts of the world, and profound insights remain for the effort of learning and practicing. To name just one sub-study, architecture, especially of older structures across Europe, has much to teach about earth energies, proportion, symmetry, psychological effect, symbolism, etc.
10 — Study and practice ritual. We all do ritual already. Humans are a ritualizing species — so are many animals and birds. It repays richly to make at least some of our rituals more conscious and intentional, to learn and perform life-giving rites, and to develop new ones at need.
11 — Study and practice poetry, or word-awen. As with music, the field of poetry is vast. In spite of the bad experience many of us have with how “poetry” is taught in schools, the art is vital and alive and lives deep in our hearts in songs, sayings, chants, metaphors, idioms in language, and so on. Poetry slam competitions can be eye-opening for the power of spoken performance, and the best performers in most popular music are creative lyricists.
12 — A study and practice of astronomy and cosmology can open up literal and symbolic worlds. With some ingenuity and willingness to search for materials, inexpensive and partially home-made reflector telescopes are with the reach of many, and can help independent observers make useful and significant contributions to planetary and stellar science.
13 — Meditation, contemplation, dream-study and inner exploration complement the spiritual path anyone may take. The physiological benefits are well-established; the spiritual ones become apparent over time as well.
Things I’ve left off the list may be occurring to you even as you read this. But you get the idea. Druidry itself IS open and free. How you explore and what you choose to do with its many facets will involve you in different kinds of exchanges — time, money, study, effort, searching — for what you receive. Everyone can join and belong to DOYO — Druidry On Your Own.
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Images: Pexels.com
A Druid Way 