Tag Archives: Druid

We are all Connected

The thing that really comes to mind here is the part in the Disney movie The Lion King where Mufasa says in that great James Earl Jones voice, “We are all connected in the great circle of life.”

Mufasa was speaking about an ancient and correct concept but the reference was a bit abstract. He spoke about how the antelopes eat the grass and the lions eat the antelopes and then the lions eventually die and become the grass. This is very true of the physical cycle of death and rebirth but we need to dig a bit deeper for this discussion.

We are all connected by the force of life and inspiration. The Druids call this force Awen and look to it as the divine spirit that flows through all things. Christians call this The Holy Spirit and describe it as the living spirit of God. The Asian cultures recognize this force or spirit in the art of Feng Shui and go into great detail on how to connect and interact with it. Many other cultures recognize the presence of this force.

Christians also present this concept from the Gospel of Thomas that makes the following statements

“Split wood, I am there. Lift up a rock, you will find me there.” -Gospel of Thomas 77b

“Jesus said: If your leaders say to you ‘Look! The Kingdom is in the heavens!” Then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the Kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather, the Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you.” -Gospel of Thomas 3a

“the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands.” -Acts 7:48
This is a clear and undeniable illustration that the force/spirit/presence of god is everywhere and within everything.

I would like to note that both the Druidic and Christian schools of thought relate this spirit to divine presence and inspiration. Druids cultivated a connection with this force for inspiration in poetry and divinitation while Christians are “filled with the Holy Spirit” and “speak in tongues,” often with a prophetic message, which is also a form of divinitation. Is this coincidence or are different cultures tuning in to the same force?

The other thing that comes to mind is Star Wars (it’s ok to laugh) . The books and the movie are all based off of some very heavy research into Joseph Campbell’s work. Campbell practically fathered the field of comparative mythology that strove to find the common concepts in all religions. He then surmised that the concepts that all religions have in common must be universal truth because they are all manifesting from the sub(or super)conscious of mankind. One of these central concepts that connect almost all religions is there is a divine force flowing through everyone and everything; the very same “Force” that is talked about so much in the Star Wars mythology. This force connects us with everything else everywhere because it is a part of all things and flowing through all things.

There is a quote that I use on one of my signature line in e-mails that is a further illustration of this concept from yet another source:

There is life on earth – one life, which embraces every animal and plant on the planet. The time has divided it up into several million parts, but each is an integral part of the whole. A rose is a rose, but it is also a robin and a rabbit. We are all of one flesh, drawn from the same crucible.
– Lyall Watson, Supernature, 1973

This type of principle is also presented in the Celtic (and druidic) poetry form that begins with “I am”. An example of my own poetry in this style is as follows:

A part of all things

I am raven on the field
I am drop of rain cascading down the water fall
I am deer stepping softly through a wooded glade
I am moss growing on the ancient tree
I am ember blazing in the sacred fire
I am rock hiding beneath the soil
I am beam of light cutting through the still of night
I am wind rustling reeds of the bog
I am sound echoing from the dolmen
I am and was and will be

The poem is also a meditation designed to open the doors of connection between you and all elements of life. You learn it by heart and close your eyes and with a relaxed focus you recite it line for line and visualize your life force being each of these elements over the course of history and with each visualization the door to the full awareness of the connection with everything around you opens a little wider.

Notice the poem identifies with animal (raven) and plant (moss and tree) and element (ember of fire, drop or rain & wind) and it is also identifying with the intangible energy given by light and sound. This is also energy and also part of the great circle of life.

The final line makes reference to the eternal nature of life stating that I have been all these things and that I am currently all these things because we are all connected and that I will continue to be all these things. You realize that you, as a form of life and energy, are eternal. “Energy can be neither created nor destroyed” as Albert Einstein once said. It can only change forms. When we truly realize this in the right frame of mind it’s like seeing the code in The Matrix when Neo realizes the truth of the Matrix. A whole new world of possibilities opens up that was always there but we just never saw it. Our perspective shifts from our own personal lives to see the greater picture of reality and how we are all connected.

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What is a Druid, an essay

I look at the role of druid as more of an archetype for both a scholar, priest and shaman rolled into one. The Native Americans, Inuit, Australian and Siberian aborigines all had druids of a sort but with their own specific cultural twists. I’m not a Star Wars fanatic but I certainly look at the jedi order presented in those tales as a very good interpretation of the druid archetype.
Another exquisite illustration of the druidic archetype is the Fremen lifestyle as presented in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert. I actually heard through pure rumor that Mr. Herbert may have been a closet druid at the time of penning those particular works. The stories of his “righteous oppressed underdog” Fremen people value a closeness to the spirit of the land, an appreciation for ceremony and formal passages in the stage of life, an organized tribe style government with a council of elders, a shamanistic approach to accessing the “otherworld” and a recognition that time and space do not exist there, and organized formal spiritual leaders that presided over ceremonies and guided their people on a spiritual plain. I would certainly say that their culture (though fictional it is) is just a druidic that of the celts.

I do generally believe in the “four pillars of druidry” being multiple lives, spirit in all things, reverence for ancestors and multiple worlds. And of course, let us not forget Truth, thought that is such a supreme and transcendent concept that it deserves a category on it’s own. Though different people may have variants on these themes generally speaking if there is some semblance or recognition of these basic tenants I’ve always believed it satisfied the general spiritual, intellectual and social path of druidry, no matter what cultural title you give it.

This is a bit controversial I understand but I don’t particularly believe that druidry has to incorporate the three realms and the cosmology of infinity as the celts did. This is in my mind more of a cultural ideal. The Native American tribes didn’t all believe in an infinite universe nor do the Inuits but they are no less druidic in my assessment. Whether you declare there is 1 or 20 “otherworlds” or that the universe is infinite or that we all ride upon the shell of a great cosmic turtle in our physical world that does not change your heart or your endorsement of the four pillars and love of truth in whatever form they may be manifesting in your culture/path.

A druid need not be a celtic shaman following the path of the green man or some other celtic deity. A druid is in your heart and soul. It’s in your ethics and your outlook on the world and your place in it.

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