Every now and then I read questions on discussion forums from people who say that they’re not pagan or polytheist or whatever and does this mean they can’t be a Druid.
When I first encountered Druidry I found I could easily relate to the importance of Nature and of ancestors (of blood, of the land and of spirit) and I’d long been drawn to mythology and folklore – but I did have two major problems. Nothing that I do or believe involves what I consider ‘gods’ and I’m totally put off by ‘formal’ ritual. I managed to set the problem with ritual to one side readily enough. Although just about every book I read mentioned rituals and they came up somewhere in every discussion group I’ve visited, Druidry has no set books, no holy books, and is almost entirely dogma-free. Whilst there were lots of rituals available if I wanted to use them, they were very varied and no-one said you had to perform any particular one or, in fact, any one at all. So I decided to keep researching the path and simply miss out rituals. Druidry is, after all, a fairly solitary path for most of the time, partly because Druids are relatively few and far between and groves and gatherings nearly always involve travelling significant distances (neither very practical nor environmentally friendly on a regular basis.)
I was still left with the problem of gods. Once again, wherever I turned in books or websites, gods kept cropping up and many, but by no means all, of those writing seemed to be polytheists. I certainly didn’t want to reject the sincerely-held views of others but how could I be sharing a path with these people if my reality wasn’t theirs? Rather like the problem with ritual, I soon discovered that, because different druids encountered different gods and different forms of gods, there was no one saying that I had to believe in any specific god or even any specific form of god. I also realised that part of the problem lies in what the word ‘god’ means to me.
I’ve been conditioned by an upbringing in a country that is nominally Christian. Also God, to me, has always implied a being at the top of some sort of hierarchy. I don’t like hierarchies. Nature works best with webs and interactions and though we humans try to express some of these in hierarchical terms, they’re just our way of looking at things. We often think we’re at the ‘apex’ of evolution but that’s just because we’re looking at it from this point. Every organism alive now is just as ‘evolved’ as us because it’s here; now. We think we’re successful but sharks, cockroaches etc. have been around a lot longer than us. Sharks have been tried and tested for 450 million years; cockroaches for 300 million years. At just over 2 million years for the various species of Homo we’re still in the beta-testing stage! I reject the whole idea of a hierarchy of living things and certainly the idea that humans are somehow near the top of it. By extension, I reject the idea that these anthropomorphic gods (see below) are somehow part of this hierarchy and somewhere above us in it.
Next there’s my conditioning into what a god should look like. The Christian god of my childhood was a bearded old man. Nearly all the gods described by druids and pagans in anything I read were mainly human in form as well, though sometimes with an additional pair of antlers or hooves. Why should gods look even remotely like humans? Why are humans so important? None of this makes sense to me.
Those were the philosophical problems. Next is the practical one. I’ve never seen, heard or been contacted by any god-like entity while awake or even asleep. I’m aphantasic so I can’t even close my eyes and picture one in my imagination and I’ve certainly never encountered a ‘real’ one. Despite that, I decided that I still had much to learn from Druids although I’d resigned myself never to being one myself. I was prepared to accept that the TDN’s ‘Foreword to the Constitution definition’ described Druidry without it actually describing me or my own path and to continue as an ‘also ran’ member. Membership of TDN provided me with a secure and relatively private place to discuss my beliefs and to learn more about the beliefs of others so, despite not believing my path was a ‘religion’ or myself a Druid, I continued to research Druidry.
Eventually I’ve come to reassess where I sit in relation to Druidry. I still don’t ‘perform’ rituals but I do take a moment every morning and evening to acknowledge the importance of my ancestors, just as I’ve always done. I go out walking in the countryside as often as I can, just as I’ve always done. Every now and again on my walks I’ll pause and, just for a moment, absorb that feeling of peace, stillness and connection that I can only find when immersed in Nature. Are these rituals? I don’t call them rituals but they seem to serve the same purpose for me that ritual serves for others: they’re sacred and essential for me, helping me to be aware of and feel part of something greater than just myself (and they are repeated actions) so perhaps they are rituals.
When I’m in those moments of stillness, I can somehow sense the web of which I’m just a small part. More than that; I can sense the life that surrounds me – and not just the physical life. If I am conscious; if, as I choose to believe, I am also spirit, then what I can sense seem to be the ‘spirits’ of the wind; the trees; the heather that surround me. These ‘spirits’, of the wind, trees, heather, birds and insects, are not greater entities than I am, we’re all just parts of something; some web. That’s how I choose to interpret the ‘god’ concept. The ‘spiritual thing’ which is greater than me is the whole web that we’re all part of; the interaction between all those component spirits.
I’d still not choose the term ‘religion’ to describe my own practice but it does seem to fit the definition that TDN got the Charities Commission to accept and I still don’t refer to gods or deities but I do refer to spirit. These are, after all, just words which can mean slightly different things to different people. So, I’d say, don’t look for Druidry to tell you what to do or believe and don’t try to become a Druid by simply trying to copy what others are doing. Examine and question what you actually do and believe already and then see how that sits with the Druidry you find in your researches. Unlike many religions, most involved in Druidry don’t try to tell you that you must do certain things to become a Druid (and if they do, take care!) When you do research it a bit more you often find Druidry is something that you’ve been doing all along but just didn’t have a name for.