Category: Nature

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Abred Annwn Awen Barddas Bards Celts Community Creativity Culture Cymru - Wales Divination Druidic Virtues Druidry Druids Education Ethics Gorsedd Gwynfyd Insight Iolo Morganwg Knowledge Learning Meditations Morality Nature OBOD Ovates Reflections Reincarnation Religion The Druid Network Theology Three Branches Values Wisdom

Thoughts on Druidic belief and authority

I wrote this as a contribution to a discussion that’s ongoing in the members’ forums of the Druid Network. Those are private, so I thought I might post it here so that a broader audience can read it and contribute their thoughts.

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Abred Annwn Awen Bards Deities Divination Druidic Virtues Druidry Druids Iolo Morganwg John Michael Greer Meditations Nature Ovates Reflections Religion Second Sight Theology Three Branches Values

Spiritual struggle and the way we frame the world

I was recently reading a Substack article by Rod Dreher, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which led me to this piece by David Bentley Hart. Hart talks about a man called Reuben, who he met many years ago in Lancaster, England. I haven’t read anything by Hart before; Dreher, though devout in his Christian faith, has a mystic aspect to his faith which often overlaps the Druidic worldview. Hart has this to say of Reuben:

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Barddas Creativity Cymru - Wales Druidic Virtues Druidry Iolo Morganwg Knowledge Learning Nature Ovates Three Branches Values

Iolo the Ovate 1: the bones of the earth

Green is the colour of the Ovate, and under the sign of this colour are placed all the sciences of awen and reason and cogency, as distinct from what belongs to the principal sciences of Bardism, and all the improvement of sciences of whatever kind they may be, so that they are good. That is to say, they are assimilated to the green vegetation of the growth of earth, woods, and fields, which delights the heart and eye of those who behold them.
Barddas: The Triads of Privilege and Usage.

Iolo Morganwg was a stonemason. Most people who know anything about him could tell you that – but I suspect very few of them could tell you what it meant. Indeed, I suspect that, if pressed, people would guess it meant something like a bricklayer – a relatively unskilled manual job, of low social status.

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Archetypes Barddas Creativity Crow Culture Cymru - Wales Druidic Virtues Druidry Education Gwyn ap Nudd Insight Iolo Morganwg Knowledge Learning Nature OBOD Theology Values Wisdom

More thoughts on cultural appropriation

Periodically, the OBOD forums I participate in see discussions arise about cultural appropriation.

I’ve already made my position clear on this: it annoys the heck out of me, and I get really angry at people who take elements of Welsh language and culture and casually try to redefine them turn them into something they are not – which most often seems to be a rebranded version of common pagan themes. For example, there are currently a number of people trying to treat Gwyn ap Nudd as a rebranded, touchy-feely, Cernunnos, when the extant body of myth clearly depicts him as quite different.

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Culture Cymru - Wales Druidry Education Eisteddfod Nature Rewilding Y Gymraeg - The Welsh Language

Send the children to the woods

Every year in May, for nearly a century, a message of peace has been sent to the children of the World by the members of Urdd Gobaith Cymru (The League of the Hope of Wales, aka Welsh League of Youth), the Welsh-speaking youth organisation founded in 1922 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards.

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