My Path in Druidry

A brief introduction by Sunbird

I was sixteen years old when the path of Druidry called out to me though not at first directly. I had been brought up as a very religious boy, attending a Methodist church, but it never really satisfied me, I was filled with questions and the most important question to me at that time was simply, "If god is the father, who is the mother?". My beliefs in the power of prayer were strong, and indeed one day I asked that question to the deity I once called god, the answer came partly as vision and partly as message. Although the vision is something I will keep to myself, the message was simply that I would have to find it out for myself. Almost as if it were part of the answer I was given a book on the Celtic Gods and also on Gaia, the Greek Earth Mother, and from there I was thrown into a chaotic and colourful world of confliction with all that I had been brought to believe. All of a Sudden Pagans did not worship the devil, sacrifice virgins or goats nor were they able to turn people into a toad. All of a sudden, humanity had a place in the world and the environment and it wasn't simply to destroy it, but in fact it was to align ourselves with it and live in harmony. All of a sudden Druids weren't characters in a role playing game. All of a sudden in fact, christianity itself turned out to have been more of a demon than the religions it so damned. I spent many years in anger of the long list of crimes that Christians had enacted on the various peoples of the world, from the theft and plagerism of pagan holidays, rituals and tools, to the massacre of nine million innocent people in Europe, charging them with witchcraft even when these in fact were not witches but were healers, midwives, and common folk, a list of crimes that was again enacted on the native peoples of America, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, either in the name of blind faith or more commonly in the name of Gold.*

I began my path in Paganism in 1991, two years after that I was gifted with a set of Ogham, which catapulted me towards Druidry. I joined OBOD in 1997 and Studied the Bardic Grade for over two years, I then entered the Ovate Grade and studied it for around another two years, at which point my life was ripped apart by my now ex wife. I entered hell, being left suicidal, paranoid, depressed and totally broken. She tore away my children and still does to this day. But for all this I am thankful, for if I had not entered the depths of hell, I would not have been sent on a spiralling path through the many other shamanisms of the world, including Mongolian, Native American, South American, Australian and others. From my time in this journey I found so many crossovers with Druidry that I was left stronger in my path than I could ever have been.

Druidry made me into a more sociable person and allthough my learning was marred by the irrationality of youth, it is the reason I am doing what I am doing now. In fact it is the reason I live where I live, work where I work and love who I have loved. Druidry gave colour to my life and purpouse to my path.

I suppose that in truth, I am a Pagan, just not in the conventional, pre-packaged, mind, body, spirit bookshelf way, my paganism is something that has evolved through communication with the wild forces of the world, not through reading books of correspondences written by famous authors. allthough of course I have read many books and have learned a great deal from them. For me, Druidry is a Shamanism. It is based on thousands of years of acculmulated knowledge, trial and error.