#rdna

A Druid because the path feels right to me. My personal practice and general demeanor toward religion and spirituality in general was always aligned with druidry before I even knew it was a thing. Having been raised catholic, I was fairly sheltered from other spiritual paths.

As for why the OBOD, it was a personal choice and preference really. Most of the Druid organizations out there are, generally, the same. With a few different practices and beliefs and names for different things. But in general, the beliefs and structures are all rather similar. The RDNA was a close second choice.

What I like about it is pretty much everything. From the structure, the group itself, the members I know personally, and the more famous members that I only know of. The learning packages they offer to members as well as the other services they offer are top notch. It’s like a large worldwide extended family really.

As far as where I ‘do my own thing’ it’s kind of… all of it really. The teachings within the OBOD aren’t super structured like “you have to do this or that” it’s more a loose framework and ideology, with thought provoking ideas and mythology, methods of tying the magical to the mundane, and seeing the magical within the mundane.

It mostly all lines up as it is though, with my personal beliefs and practices.

Thank you so much for asking! If you would like to know more my dms are always open!

/|\

M.G.

The personal Way is the way of the individual. The Personal Way is the Way of the Pagan. The Way is the call of the cycles as they whirl overhead and underfoot. The cycles are ever-present and cry out for recognition. The Earth Mother and Father Sky make up the universe and participate in its activity. As a child of the Earth and Sky, this Pagan recognizes and cherishes the cycles. The Pagan is a participant in the Universe. The Pagan holds NO dominion over this world. The Pagan is a child of the Way, not the Lord of the Way. For the Way is not a Master, but a participant in the Way. The Pagan, the Earth Mother, Father Sky, the gods and goddesses and stars and all in the universe participate in the dance of the Way. For to dance in the Way is to live in the Way.

Edit Note 8/25/2019: This is an old post which may not totally reflect what I still think today but it’s still fairly close to my ideas and I think it still can be an interesting read nonetheless. I may or may not make a more updated post here in a few days. Note that I use the term “the Fey” as if to refer to all nature spirits. I personally would not do this anymore and would instead keep the term to refer specifically to the ideas of the fairies and the Irish and Scottish Sidhe of folklore instead as it should be. Other then this it should still stand up as a decent post nevertheless.

My overall relationship and theological position on the gods is a very complicated and ever-changing one, but it generally revolves around the idea that most if not all gods came from one of the following origins:

1) Once an ancestral spirit, whose importance rose to that of divinity and thus their true origin was, overtime, forgotten about. 2) A spirit of nature, personified by humanity and worshiped in a more personal, human form. 3) Neither of the above, but instead totally and completely formed out of the sheer belief of many people who became convinced of their existence, thus creating a “thought-form” that became its own deified, independent spirit.

This perspective leads to many natural assumptions and conclusions. For example, many people could worship the “same god” but if their beliefs and notions are significantly different from each other, then different versions of that god may begin to manifest. Moreover, by worshiping the “spirit” of a natural phenomenon in the form of a personified deity, different “aspects” of that spirit may form. This leads to some interesting questions, like did the collective “spirit” of thunder storms decide to make gods like Thor, Perun, Taranis, and Zeus, or did humanity make them up and thus spawn them into existence?

Despite my work to pull myself out of years upon years of drowning in my depression, I still struggle to feel like I have “good” days. I am used to every day feeling bad or, at minimum, uneventful. I may have good times during the day, such as while laughing with friends or enjoying a meal, but rarely does joy ever feel sustained for more than a few hours at a time. (Not that it necessary for joy to be sustained for that long, but I am used to falling back into a deep sadness after such brevity.)

Today, though, was an actually, truly, and fully good day. With the temperatures in Minnesota below freezing and even dipping below zero, and with work keeping me cooped up in my apartment, I have struggled to spend as much time as I’d like to outside this time of year. Even though it’s winter, Minnesota is one of few places I’ve lived where there are things to do in the winter besides sit around. The temps have begun to rise this week, and so I decided I’d spend my morning my way and then use the afternoon to work. With my ADHD, I crave novelty, especially in order to focus my executive function. Thus, I decided I would take my meds and use the couple hours it takes for them to kick in to take a hike to Oakdale Grove’s namesake Nemeton at Oakdale Grove Nature Preserve, get some breakfast, then settle in to work at a cafe.

Since I began studying Druidry, I’d been reading @minnesotadruids ‘s archive of their history and practice up here in the Twin Cities. He has a few posts that detail various adventures and discoveries within the circle of pin oaks tucked inconspicuously just off a mowed trail in the preserve’s restored prairie. I’ve never physically visited the Nemeton myself, since I usually avoid stepping off-trail in the Season of Life, when ticks and prickly plants eagerly await a bite of me. I find the Season of Sleep to be the perfect time to be daring enough to venture beyond my usual bounds.

I hiked out to the mowed trail leading to the Nemeton just an hour and a half after sunrise. Ahead of me, I could hear crow calls, and as I came to the part of the trail where I’d need to turn left towards the grove, I saw them flocking in one of the trees on the corner.

They flew off as I turned the corner, as if the Morrigan had spared a short moment to ensure my safe arrival at the Nemeton.

It’s easy to miss the grove if you don’t know what you’re looking at. Indeed, I’d tried finding it myself during previous visits and walked right past every time until our Grove made a collective pilgrimage a couple years ago.

At the center is the Mother Tree who fell some year ago but whose remaining trunk has a deep hollow that other visitors seem to treasure, adding to the sacredness of the place, in my opinion. It is apparently the site of a geocache and John has had other instances of finding votive offerings near the Mother Tree.

On the southern side of the tree, I spied the tiniest little curl of birch bark within the underbrush and picked it up as I circled to the opposite side. There, about 4-5 feet from the trunk I notices the corpse of an eastern mole (Scalopus aquaticus) laying on an above-ground root, looking almost as if it was crawling across it. I don’t know whether it died naturally there, or if some bird of prey dropped it, but because I have a tendency to stumble upon the corpses of animals during my hikes, I left the little piece of birch bark in offering.

In my adventures I’ve found dead creatures as tiny as a lonely snail shell on a rock outcropping, or as fascinating as a beaver on a tree where I know eagles perch to eat their catches, or as surprising as a redtail hawk smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk that seemed to have lost an aerial battle. I will usually leave an offering, or in the case of the lonely snail shell take it to leave somewhere liminal or sacred-seeming.

I don’t take every animal corpse I see as any sort of “sign,” but given my interests in death and necromancy, and coupled with some other recent divinations and synchronicities that all carry some message such as “the end of the beginning,” the mole and birch feel especially heavy with symbolic significance. Birch (beith in the Ogham alphabet) is suggestive of new beginnings, and moles are associated with death, the otherworld, faith, and intuition.

It’s rare I receive such clear, repetitive, and heavy-handed insights through my divinations and synchronicities. “The end of the beginning” is such a strange message to receive, but perhaps a thematically important one. My picking up Druidry was meant to be a new beginning, to give myself a new way of living and a way to live with intention. If I am truly reaching an “end” to that beginning, then I am reaching a new, developed, and fuller part of my story. It, too, would be a new beginning, yes, but perhaps this threshold is one with greater confidence and experience behind it.

I have been weighing if or when I might officially choose to present myself for the Third Order in the RDNA tradition. I’ve been scared to, largely for fear of rushing myself or not having “pure intentions.” There have been signs, I suppose, that I’ve been ready. When the string to my devotional pendant broke in August before I had a chance to cut it on the New Moon, I had been meditating on the Third Order, and my Archdruid suggested it might be a sign that I was ready “ahead of schedule.” I definitely don’t think I was ready then, but I think I feel more ready now. I’ve been working at identifying ways I might avail myself to my community, both through intentional acts of training and service and simply by listening and volunteering when called. I recently earned my First-Aid/CPR/AED certification, since I’d like to be a street medic, and I am taking self- and community-protection seminars in order to physically prepare myself for strife that I know is ahead in the US political climate. I want to be both a healer and a defender. I want to make good on my oaths and devotions to the Morrigan. I want to be a contributing member of my communities and I want to help people. I want to be for others what I’ve never had in my own life.

I don’t need priestly ordination to do any of that, but I think marking an official occasion might be nice, as well as carrying forth a tradition and seeing what I can do through and for the RDNA. I’ve loved building community with my Grove and other Reformed Druids, and especially helping other new and would-be Druids find their own paths. I’m curious about what else I can do and what I might have yet to discover.

I left the Nemeton and finished the big circle around the restored prairie, visiting the pink granite glacial radical that used to sit within the grove and on which John had carved a Druid Sigil years ago. Across the prairie I spied a small herd of deer taking the mowed footpath themselves towards the grove, just like I had. Given that the term “hindsight” has some funny overlaps with the synonym for female deer/does (“hind”) and their associations with wisdom and the otherworld, it felt like an affirming close of this line of meditation.