Blog

Adventures in Nutopia – New Podcast
Exciting news! The Order has been working with the Sony award-winning presenter Dr David Bramwell to bring you a brand new podcast. It is called “Adventures in Nutopia”

Are The Gods Real?
This week we share Joanna van der Hoeven’s beautiful short video on finding the Gods…

Arta the Bear Goddess ~ Mother Honey Paw
Finding courage and inner resilience seems to be the order of the day for so many people around me at the moment, myself included. The Goddess as She-Bear has always held great attraction for me. In modern Paganism some have come to call her Arta or Artio. As Goddess, the She-Bear is our primal mother…

Beltane, Ringing the Ritual Changes
For many years I was dissatisfied with many Beltane celebrations I had attended. Now, I realise I am a bit odd generally, but, when it comes to Beltane I am odder still. I have always found the over emphasis on giving a human face to the fecundity of nature makes me uncomfortable…

Birds, Breath, Balance and Blessings
Let us consider the warming earth beneath our feet at the vernal equinox – a time of rising energy and joy!

Celebrating the Month of May
The Irish name for May is Bealtaine. Linguistically at least, the May Day festival sets the scene for a calendar month. As I experience the wheel of the year in my own life, this feels right. May, the merry month, has always been special to me. Born towards the end of the month in 1949,…

Climbing Down From The Tree
I’ve been truly feeling the energies of Beltane this year. It is a joyous festival that celebrates love and passion; the natural world explodes into life; the greening and blossoming cracking open our senses…

Dear Winter
Look, I know that you know I’ve not been your greatest fan. Ok, that’s an understatement, I’ve never liked you. Looking back I don’t think you’ve really ever done anything wrong. It’s not like I have some overriding memory logged in my childhood of a Winter catastrophe, but when I feel you approaching something in…

Ecstacy Is Our Birthright
Ecstasy is essential to living a healthy life. Our bodies require experiencing ecstatic states of consciousness. From getting lost in music to dreaming without limits, from beautiful sexuality to having visionary experiences, we need moments of ecstasy to remain in balance. Ecstasy is part of what makes us human. Did you know the same chemicals…

Falling In Love
You might find this a surprising heading for a blog about Druidry and the natural world but in fact Falling in Love, is what so often happens. Some of you may have seen the article in The Guardian on the 3rd April 2023 entitled A New Start After 60, which featured what happened to me after a rather…

Feeling More Magical
“How do you feel more magic all the time?” I’m writing Wednesday blog posts for a particular person, who has jumped in with a question this week. It’s a good question and one that raises a lot of other questions. Most of us don’t feel more magical, we struggle with banality, with things that grind…

Not Being Grounded
Grounding is a strategy that many Pagans use after magic and ritual, or simply as an everyday practice. The idea is to come back into your body, connect with the ground, the physical, your roots etc. Over on facebook recently my friend Tre raised issues about what you do if your body is a place…

Personal Safety and the Solo Pilgrimage
This week’s article is a re-Blog from The British Pilgrimage Trust by Dawn Champion. A recent report into pilgrimage revealed that men in younger age groups are more likely to make these journeys alone, with women preferring groups of two to three. Often this is due to concerns about how safe women really are in…

Poetry, Story & Ritual: The Three Strange Angels
Was the skald who first recited Beowulf a poet or a storyteller? The answer of course, is both. It was only later that story and poetry separated out, like the various liquids in an apothecary’s jar. In our over compartmentalised and reductionist world, poems are one thing, stories another, and yet it has always been…

Taking a New Breath: Raising an Altar
‘The altar’ can be a term to make hackles rise. We can find a difficulty in divorcing the term from its primary cultural association, embedded in mainstream religion. It’s good to get over this, though, as an altar is a wonderful tool for anyone on a spiritual path. Let’s unpack its uses…

The Quest for Druidry via Arthur, Ceridwen and Other Ancient Myths
I am a self confessed modern day druid, many people over the years try to tell me and others like me, that I can not be a druid as I do not know what they did, there is no book of rules to follow so how do I know that I am doing is authentic…

The Quickening
Love, lust, genetic necessity (call it what you will) is in the air. On the wet edges of Alverstone Mead, amongst flimsy willow branches, two grey herons sway in their newly constructed nest; paired hares nibble shoots of wheat in the fields at Arreton; ducks on the Yar, no longer in huddles, are now spread…

Welcome to the Order’s Blog
Social Media is a great place to meet new friends, follow pages, and get involved in groups of like-minded people, but the problem with information posted on Social Media is its transiency. Posts are made, then quickly slip down never to be seen again.