The second 4 were presented at the Medieval Hall, Salisbury, in August 2008. The next Mt Haemus Day will be at the Medieval Hall again in 2012.

Musicians 2008

Speakers 2008

2000 - The Origins of Modern Druidry
Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at Bristol University is leading a five-year research project on the history of Druidism, funded by the government's Arts and Humanities Research Board. This project involves major research endeavours, an academic conference and the publication of two books. More details.

2001 - Druidry: Exported Possibilities and Manifestations
Gordon Cooper, co-founder of the Inis Glas Hedge School, is researching, amongst a variety of topics, the relationship between modern Druidry and the Woodcraft movement. In addition, Gordon has now been appointed the Order’s Archivist, and is busy cataloguing, preserving and scanning all the archives into CD rom format. More details.

2002 - Phallic Religion in the Druid Revival
John Michael Greer, an established author who specialises in Western Magical traditions, is researching, again amongst a variety of topics, the connections between contemporary Druidry and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. More details.

2003 - Question, Answer and the Transmission of Wisdom in Celtic and Druidic Tradition
Caitlin & John Matthews have dedicated their lives to researching and presenting material on Celtic spirituality and Druidism. They are the authors of numerous books and are past presiders of the Order and frequent speakers at Order events. More details.

2004 - Universal Majesty, Verity and Love Infinite
Dr. Adam Stout, gaining his doctorate in Archaeology at Lampeter University, has specialised in a study of George Watson Mac-Gregor Reid, the flamboyant and eccentric Chief of the Ancient Druid Order. More details.

2005 - Working With Animals
Professor Roland Rotheram was the senior lecturer in Myths and Legends and Comparative Religious Studies for 12 years at the University of Staffordshire. In this study he develops a new theory on the relationship between humans and animals in a shamanic and spiritual context, exploring the symbolism of animal figures in early faiths and examining the links between various priesthoods and the animals they invoke in their rituals. Surviving traces of early nature beliefs in modern world religions are examined as well as those in use by those following the shamanic and druid paths. More details.

2006 - 'I would know my Shadow and my Light' - An exploration of Michael Tippet’s The Midsummer Marriage and its relevance to a study of Druidism
Philip Carr-Gomm is the author of a number of books on Druidry and here he explores Tippett's work in depth, comparing the lives of Tippett and Ross Nichols, and the relevance of his opera to modern Druidry and the Bardic training of the Order. More details.

2007 - Entering Faerie: Elves, Sidhe-folk and the Ancestors
Dr James Maertens (Alferian) explores the world of Faerie and its value for us today.
Elves and Faerie folk are alive and well in modern culture, especially among the culture of magical folk and those pursuing a nature spirituality, but also most obviously in children's literature. Fictional representations of the Hidden People are drawing more and more
on the study of folklore and actual present-day accounts of "meeting the Other Crowd." Rejecting the term "supernatural" and the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity, I consider the reality of the Sidhe as something that is part of Nature and part of the human psyche at the same time. Modern Druids must walk a fine line between the study of old folklore and the creation of new folklore. How do we live in a culture of scientific materialism and yet challenge the dominant knowledge paradigm? More details.

2008 - Druid Ethics

Dr Brendan Myers explores the way in which In Druidry, both ancient and modern, ethical ideas are presented not in the form of rules and laws, nor in the form of a utilitarian calculus of benefits and harms, but rather in the form of character-values. This way of thinking about ethics is known in contemporary philosophy as 'Areteology', or 'Virtue'. Furthermore, many of the most important Druidic virtues, such as honour, integrity, inspiration, strength, courage, and so on, are not only categories of ethics. They are also categories of aesthetics. We value them not just because they are right and good; we also value them because they are beautiful. I shall therefore also explore this overlap between the aesthetic and the ethical, and show how Celtic spirituality is particularly well positoined to embody a meeting place between the ethical and the aesthetic, the beautiful and the good. Read the Paper

2009 - What is a Bard?

Dr Andy Letcher looks at the way in which Druidry is currently undergoing a process of reflection and self-examination. Given that it professes to be a timely and necessary worldview, to offer practical solutions to some of the world’s problems, why isn’t it more widely recognised and appreciated? One possibility is that it has yet to adjust fully to life in a post-Hutton world. Much of what we assumed to be true about Druidry has been revealed as the wishful thinking of Romantic laudanum addicts, Edwardian anthropologists and other fantasists. If we are drawn to call ourselves Druids or Bards, how do we answer the challenge thrown to us by the new historicity? Upon what principles can we base our practice? Read the Paper

2010 - Druidry and Transpersonal History: Jung, Maslow, Wilber, Assagioli, and Beyond  

Dr. Thomas C. Daffern is a philosopher, historian, poet, author, lecturer, musician, thinker, educator, consultant and religious studies specialist. He was awarded his PhD from the University of London for a thesis which explores the history of the search for peace from 1945-2001 and which proposes a new field of historiography, Transpersonal History, as the best way to establish a rigorous discourse on peace among rival and contending spiritual and intellectual traditions, currently battling for hegemony on the planet. More recently he has developed the Periodic Table of the World’s Religious and Philosophical Traditions as a teaching / research aid for use in schools and universities (www.thewisdompages.co.uk). As a member of OBOD and as Peace Officer to the Council of British Druid Orders (COBDO) he has had a long love-affair with Druidry and an eco-centred spirituality affirming the wisdom of primal peoples of all cultures, epochs and geographical regions. He founded and runs the Druid Peace Order dedicated to peacemaking and mediation. As a religious studies teacher he is committed to sharing scientific approaches to the study of religions with younger minds. He has lectured in all aspects of religious studies, peace studies and global philosophy, and directs the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy (www.educationaid.net)

Thomas writes: "The aim of my Mt Haemus research will be to examine developments in 20th century transpersonal psychology, including Jung, Maslow, Wilber and Grof to assess their potential for contributing to the development of Druidic thought, and to assess in particular the relevance of Wilber's critiques of eco-spiritualities to contemporary Druidry. The paper will build from the author’s doctoral thesis, which argued for the need for a new genre of historiography (like feminist history, or economic history) namely transpersonal history, arguing that we need an objective, scientific way of doing historical research, that can take cognizance of the subjective and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives, and the immense implications such inner experiences can have for outer events and circumstances. The author will examine in detail Ken Wilber’s critique of paganism as a throw-back to atavistic forms of consciousness, and place his arguments in the context of Wilber’s integral theory and “spectrum of consciousness” perspective. In tracing a history of the idea of ultimate realities and how modern transpersonal thought has dealt with this concept, the paper will ask whether Druidry might have something useful to add to this conversation – perhaps by counter-posing the particular and the love of locality and rootedness, to counter-balance the universalising transcendentalism of cosmic idealism. What would a transpersonal history look like that could be of service not just to Druidry, but to other indigenous knowledge systems still left stranded around the globe in the wake of modernism ? Could Druidry in fact play a mediating role as a very modern kind of traditional knowledge, which in fact helped give birth indirectly to the very scientific Elizabethan / Jacobean revolution that gave us the whole idea of “progress” in the first place ? Transpersonal history and the study of Druidry also poses profound questions, therefore, for the philosophy of history, which this paper will attempt to at least articulate, and point towards some possible areas of future research." To be completed 21 December 2010.

 

"Some people think history isn’t important. After all, why dwell on the past when it’s over and done with?
The future and the present seem much more exciting because they are happening or are about to happen. But the Druid, and the Bard in particular, knows that the pleasure of memory can be equal to that of anticipation.
In addition, history offers us not only the possibility of understanding the causes of present-day situations, but also a gift which at first may seem nebulous, but which is in fact essential for a truly satisfactory experience of being alive in the world: and that is a sense of context. Without context we are lost – doomed to misunderstanding and superficiality.
When we hear of the actions or decisions of a friend, a group or a country, we need to understand the context in which these decisions or actions were taken. Without knowing this we cannot hope to understand their significance. This is why gossip is so worthless when it is not harmful: without knowing a person’s history we stand ignorant and helpless before the facts presented to us. And so if we want a truly meaningful and deep relationship with another we need to learn their history, to understand the world that they live in, and how they came to be there. This is one of the most interesting experiences of being a psychotherapist: an individual about whom you have no knowledge, visits you once a week, say, for several months, and slowly tells their story, revealing their history as someone might show you their garden or their house. And slowly someone who was simply a body, a face, a voice, becomes multi-dimensional and leads you, like a storyteller, into the past and across the country, or the world.
Travel and history, then, become the two great teachers of Space and of Time, that give our lives context: breadth and depth, substance and roots.
And this explains why history is of such importance to Druids who seek to deepen their understanding of life. Recognising the vital part that history plays within Druidry, we have decided to establish an award for important historical research that relates to Druidism."
Philip Carr-Gomm

Note: Although originally the award confined itself to historical perspectives we have now broadened its remit to include any approach that seems relevant to a study or application of Druidry.