23rd Mount Haemus Lecture ~ World Druidry: Seasonal Festivals in a Globalizing Tradition

Druidry, as a contemporary, nature-based, new religious movement, has been growing and 2 spreading rapidly since the early 1990s. Druids now reside in 34 countries, across six continents, and inhabit 17 unique biomes, in addition to the mistletoe and oak filled temperate forests depicted in history and fantasy. As a nature-reverent tradition with high holidays based upon a cycle of seasonal celebrations, this begs the question: How can Druidry maintain a spiritual common core across so many, diverse ecological contexts? This paper explores the pertinent data from the World Druidry Survey of 2018-2020 — the first, large-scale global effort to collect, interpret, and learn from the stories of practicing Druids all over the world — to assess the ways in which Druid seasonal celebrations diversify, and to identify the universal themes in Druid festivals and celebrations, which serve to identify the Druids of the world as part of a coherent religious tradition.