Foraging for Pigments from Local Rocks: Making Watercolors, Oils, and Egg Tempera Paint from the Land!

A Fire and Smoke Ritual for Land Healing and Blessing

A few years ago, I led a smoke cleansing (smudge) stick making workshop at the OBOD’s East Coast Gathering event. As that event often has upwards of 100 attendees, I spent months growing and harvesting materials for the event so that everyone could make 1-2 sticks. Sure enough, everyone got to make some smudge sticks and the workshop went great. After the workshop, one of my friends and event fire tenders, Derek, came up to me and asked me about the leftover materials. I had been placing them in a paper bag, and had planned on taking them home to make more sticks or return to the land. He said, “I want to make a smudge bomb and send healing smoke to this entire land.” I said, “Yes, what a great idea!” So we tightly bundled up the remainder of the material, which filled at least 1/3 of the paper…

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The Druid’s Crane Bag

The Druid's Garden

A druid’s crane bag is a special bag, a magical bag, that many druids carry with them. Often full of shells, rocks, magical objects, feathers, stones, Ogham staves, representations of the elements, ritual tools, and much more, a crane bag is wonderfully unique to each druid! A few years ago, I shared a post about how to create a crane bag and a description of my bag at the time; today’s post revisits and deepens the treatment of this topic. In this post, we’ll look at the concept of the crane bag and where it came from, four potential purposes for bags, and some tips and tricks for how to put them together and what they might include. This is a wonderful part of the druid tradition that anyone, including those walking other paths, can enjoy!

My "ritual in a bag" crane bag, designed and created by me! My “ritual in a bag” crane bag, which I recently completed.

Crane Bag…

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Working Deeply with Water: Waters of the World Shrine and Sacred Waters

The Druid's Garden

Primal Water from the Plant Spirit Oracle

In the druid tradition, water represents the west, the place of emotions and intuition, the place of our ancestors and of the honored dead. Water is often connected with the salmon of wisdom, the salmon who dwells in a sacred pool, offering his wisdom to those who seek him. Water may serve as a gateway to other worlds and as a tool for scrying. Water can be used as a tool understand flows of all kinds. You can study flowing water through observation, fishing, boating or swimming and connected with in order to help us understand deep insights. Snow and ice can likewise, be used as spiritual tools. Water-based animals like turtles, fish, salamanders, dragonflies or water-based plants like cattail, calamus, or lotus are powerful allies for spiritual work. Working deeply with water is part of several druid teachings and courses, and…

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Druidry for the 21st Century: Psychopomping the Anthropocene

The Druid's Garden

As an animist druid, I recognize the spirit of all beings. I honor and interact with the spirits in the land, in the trees, in the animals and birds, in the insects, in the rivers, in the mountains. Animals die, plants die, insects die. Their spirits live on. In the Anthropocene, even mountains die, they are removed for mining activities all along the Appalachians and in many other places. Rivers die, and have been dying for centuries as we fill them with refuse. In the Anthropocene, many things die. What happens to that mountain’s spirit when the mountain is gone? What is happening now to the millions of non-human lives that are dying because of human activity? That’s the question we focus on today–as part of my druidry for the 21st century series. Earlier posts in this series include Druidry for the 21st Century and Druidry in the age of…

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