1. Am I correct in understanding that Druidry is, broadly speaking, a philosophy and spiritual path centred on respect for nature, living in harmony with others, and avoiding harm, while generally not imposing a fixed set of moral rules or dogmas upon its practitioners?
Yes, that is a fair summation, We do not impose dogmas on adherents. Certain understandings point towards certain attitudes. The general advice to learn about all the factors in a situation before rushing to judgement ties in nicely with Daniel Kahneman’s ‘fast and slow thinking’ concept. That our study and sought experience build a foundation of philosophical and practical knowledge, that can be brought to bear when a situation demands a quick response.
Interestingly, according to the paths they find themselves on, there are some who follow a faith but ‘on a Druid path’. That is, they apply the principles of Druidry – living experientially and ethically, holding nature and life sacred – within another faith framework. This is often a Far Eastern way, however, I know Anglican (Episcopalian) Druids, active in their church but interpreting Hebrew and the New Testaments with an emphasis on their path. A friend, who has now passed, lived his way without any reference to gods, otherworldly beings or ceremonies and rituals. He was a headmaster and a talented composer of folk songs.
2. What is the Druid perspective on eating meat and using animal products? Given the emphasis on the sacredness of all life, is a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle encouraged, preferred, or considered a personal choice?
If all things have spirit and that spirit is connected, then even the herbs and seeds we eat have personhood. We have to consider mindfully the lives that they led as we take them to assemble our necessary sustenance. There is a cycle of life and death, whatever the details, and it is for our learning and conscience to decide how we integrate that into our decisions. Every time I take a step or clean my teeth, something dies.
I eat meat infrequently, and I consume some dairy products, making my own cottage cheese, paneer and yoghourt. I use the whey from the cheesemaking as the acid component in soda bread bannocks. I try to make most of my food from scratch at the beginning of the month, to appreciate what goes into it. I plan meals for the month and batch cook to reduce waste and power consumption. This also enables me to ensure adequate nutrition across the month.
I am lucky enough to know the local forest rangers who gift me a deer carcass once in a while, which I prepare to ensure minimal waste and freeze. The rangers have passed their exams and have examined the deer for diseases and parasites, part of their statistical work. I am aware of the cycle that cows endure in the production of milk, but I live in a semi-rural area and know ethical farmers from whom I can source food locally and seasonally. Many do not have this luxury so do their background checks and read labels carefully.
I ate chickpeas grown in Kent today, watercress grown on my windowsill, my own flat bread and had a slice of homemade honey cake made with eggs and honey from neighbours. It is not so much the making of the food, but the awareness of the full journey of all things into our orbit and the interconnectedness of all things.
Good friends who are vegan visit often and I cook for them, often using recipes I picked up in the Middle East and East Africa, whilst working there. We were far from modern towns and adopted the local ways to get by. I could still probably make a rough shirt and trousers for myself.
There are unavoidable compromises. I might purchase a robust “100% cotton” shirt, but the industry standard is to sew it together with polypropylene thread. I can then look forward to the seams bunching together as the necessary hot iron shrinks the stitching, plus the knowledge of the hydrocarbon pervading the biosphere when the garment is finally discarded (having been much repaired, coveralls and cleaning rags first).
3. Would it be compatible with Druidry to be a nationalist in the sense of loving one’s nation, culture, language, history, and ancestral heritage, while still respecting other peoples and cultures?
Unthinking superiority complexes and antagonisms have no place in the Druid way. I think that it is fine for a person to love their community, however ‘macro’ that community might be, family, district, town, county, political nation, E.U., indeed the planet, but lines on a map are fictions drawn by people and we all came out of East Africa ultimately. If our mother culture is democratic with generous freedoms, then we would want to defend from any more malevolent influence, within or without. If our starting point is ‘honourable relationship’ with all then perhaps we can show them a gentler way. Hopefully, this can be done through conversation and education, starting with commonalities, while still respecting the aggressor’s evolution of their starting point. Sometimes that is not possible, current events are showing.
My personal background is from all over the place. I have family going back hundreds of years in one English county, another sizable chunk is from the Baltic with Eastern roots and there are connections to central Asia. My DNA tells me that there are 6 distinct East African tribal nations linked to my blood. I wish I’d known that while I was there.
Writings often refer to the ‘Celts’ but the grouping was appended, by a Greek traveller, to many nations who shared a similar culture. They were Gauls (of today’s France), Germanic Gauls (including today’s Benelux states), Alpine Gauls and Cis-Alpine Gauls (Northern Italy), Britons, Gaels (Ireland and Scotland), Iberian Celts, Balkan Celts and the Gallo-Grecians of Anatolia (the Galatians of the Bible).
While local squabbles produced battles in the Iron Age, they co-existed and traded well with each other. Germanic Gaulish tribes were living in today’s Spain, for instance. Local feuds were seen as wasteful by the ancient Druids, who rode their chariots between the tribes on battlefields. The tribes were ordered to take their disputes to the Lughnasadh tribunals and adjudication would cost each chieftain a white bull with red ears. Very, very expensive (Julius Caesar “The Gallic Wars”; The Metrical Dindshenchas; a herd still exists in Northumbria). The message being to negotiate your differences not come to blows.
Druidry does not have borders. It is a way that we take with us. A friend, Dr Larisa A. White, wrote an interesting statistically-based analysis, “World Druidry – A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality”, of manifestations of Druid faith around the world. She looked for common threads and recurring beliefs for a modern evolution of ‘Iolo Morganwg’s’ Revival.
4. Do modern Druids generally see truth as something objective that exists independently of us, or as something primarily discovered through personal experience and therefore different for each individual?
I think it’s more that there is so much to be discovered that absolutes often fail. Academia uses scientific method and debate to constantly challenge ‘facts’. Apparent absolutes of good and evil seem to work within humanity, but those may not be so when inter-species conflict arises. Empathy collapses or is entirely absent, and even within our species, some cultures perceive different as ‘other’, not to be granted the same respect or to honour their personhoods. The vegan considers animal life to be equivalent to human and uses plastics instead of animal parts. But the animist considers plants, fungi and hills to have full personhood too, the environmentalist will point out the iniquities of the oil industry and the damage of microplastics, given their thousand-year disintegration cycles.
Followers of the Druid ways do often have very different expressions, and one of the purposes of The Druid Network is to make a place where Druids from different schools of thought can discuss things affably, out of the public eye. A few years ago, there was a friendly conference in which pastors, priests and vicars met with Pagan and nature-centred belief leaders to find commonalities and direct thought onto the environmental crisis and relationship to nature for a shared way forward. It took place at a retreat in the English countryside and was very productive.
5. If someone becomes convinced of Druid beliefs, is any form of initiation required to be considered a Druid, or is sincerely following the path sufficient? In other words, is there a distinction between being a believer and being formally recognised as a Druid?
The more formal ‘orders’ will often have a ritual for those who wish to commit and make a starting point. They make a point of binding the person to their way. Often this is linked to study courses with mentors and assignments. These have the progression of one historical account of there being Bards (players, singers, storytellers, the communicative arts), Ovates (seers, healers, spiritual travellers) and full Druids (bearers of wisdom and the political arts, leaders and teachers). This loosely parallels Edward Williams’ levels of consciousness leading to the enlightened state. Others consider the skills as aptitudes that some have in better strength than others – that one is drawn to a role within the Druid experience. It is also pointed out that the Irish accounts list 14 levels of study with the initiate eventually making a full professor (‘Ollamh’).
There are many who do not join the orders, preferring a more private, personal and flexible expression. The Druid Network, not being affiliated to the orders, makes available several study routines tailored to different understandings so that people can explore without committing. I mentioned Emma Restall Orr before, and she gifted a ‘Perennial Study Course’ that follows the year through. It’s in the Learning Resources part of the public website. The idea is that, because two years are never the same, and that we grow and change through our lives, the course – a sort of guided meditation – asks the same questions but our answers are always different. These can be journalled and previous years looked at to notice the changes that have happened in our understandings.