Toward Ecosophy

I am in need of a rather specialized object, and figured my readers are strange enough that they might be able to help.

What I need is a wooden statue of any one of a small number of Celtic deities revered in the Druid Revival tradition:  either Hu Gadarn, Ceridwen, Hesus, Sul, or Elen. It needn't be especially fancy -- something as simple as the statue of Njord on the left would be fine. What makes this a challenging request is that it needs to be hollow: that is, there needs to be a cavity in the middle of it into which certain items can be placed.

I am entirely willing to commission such a piece and can provide ample details of the iconography I have in mind. The details noted above, however, are inflexible: the image has to be made of wood (and not any other substance), it has to be hollow, and it has to represent one of the deities named above.

If anyone can help I would be most grateful.

One of the things that's starting to surface these days, after a long period of silence on the subject, is just how many significant figures in twentieth century intellectual life were up to their eyeballs in one or another form of esoteric spirituality. Some of them remain household names today; others have been largely erased from the official history.  E. Graham Howe is one of the latter. An important influence on Alan Watts, a friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and a major figure in the history of psychology in Britain, the author of thirteen books, he's been deep-sixed from public memory...because he was a Druid.

I think most of my readers by now know that Druidry has been a significant force in alternative spiritual circles all over the English-speaking world since the eighteenth century. Howe was a member of the Universal Bond, one of the largest and most active Druid orders in the middle of the last century. He was among other things an influential teacher in the Druid scene, and at least one of his books, The Mind of the Druid, was very straightforward about his spiritual commitments. After his death in 1975, that seems to have been enough to get him cancelled.

A Druid in Psychologist's Clothing: E. Graham Howe's Secret Druidic Doctrine by Ian C. Edwards is a solid attempt to change that, discussing Howe's teachings and career with an eye toward the role of Druidry in his thought.  I was delighted to pen one of the two forewords to this book. It's pricey -- it's being released by a fine printer, Anathema Press, and costs Cdn$105.00 -- but for those who are interested in the interface between Druidry and psychology, it's well worth the price. Interested?  Details are here.

It was seven years ago today that I stepped down as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, after twelve years in that order's hot seat. Those twelve years had been a wild ride, no question; I learned a lot and had a lot of good times, but it was time to go on to other things, and the order had plenty of senior members who were capable, enthusiastic, and able to get along with people. So I stepped down and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

The aftermath was entertaining. People in half a dozen corners of the Druid scene insisted that I couldn't possibly have done that. The forum of one Druid group, the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, got so insistent about it that then-Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm had to step in and tell everybody that yes, I'd resigned my position and had emailed him about it. Once people stopped claiming that I hadn't resigned, dark rumors started to circulate; the best of the lot was a claim that two other members of the Grand Grove were supposedly having an illicit affair and had somehow blackmailed me into stepping down. I chuckled about that one for weeks.

It's always intrigued me that so many people literally don't seem to be able to imagine giving up a position like that. I suppose the thought of having a fancy title and a funny hat, and whatever swaggering rights come with being the head of a small nonprofit in the alternative-spirituality field goes to their head or something. I've occasionally thought of founding an order whose activities consist entirely of handing out ornate titles to its members, in the hope that this might satisfy what's apparently an undersupplied market. Still, the point a lot of people seem to miss is that these organizations don't exist to take overinflated egos and puff them up even further; there's genuine work to to, and it's the work that matters.

All this is relevant today, because I've done it again.

Just less than ten years ago, as my book The Celtic Golden Dawn was coming off the presses, my wife Sara and I founded an organization, the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. Its purpose was to teach the eccentric hybrid Golden Dawn/Druid system of magic I'd recovered from a mostly forgotten spectrum of between-the-wars British organizations,  reverse-engineered from the surviving fragments, field-tested at great length, and published. The DOGD has had its ups and downs, but by and large it's succeeded very well in being exactly what I wanted it to be: a modestly sized and very quiet magical order that helped a good many people work their way through the Celtic GD curriculum. As with AODA, it ended up with a good number of senior members who were capable, enthusiastic, and able to get along with people -- that is to say, more than ready to take charge of the organization themselves.

So that's what just happened. I'd like to encourage everyone to congratulate the new governing body of the DOGD:  Dean Smith, Archdruid of Fire and new head of the order; Pauline Bicker, Archdruid of Water and Chief Druid; Wayne Cayea,  Archdruid of Air and Chief Ovate; and Steve Thomas, Archdruid of Earth and Chief Bard.  They've been effectively in charge of DOGD for some months now, and Sara and I finished the formal handover today.

I'm waiting gleefully to see whether anyone insists that I can't possibly have resigned as head of DOGD, and whether dark rumors get splashed around the internet insisting that there must be some sinister reason for my resignation. The facts of the matter are that my ego is sufficiently robust that I don't need fancy titles and funny hats to bolster it -- and, of course, it really is the work that matters. With that in mind -- why, on to the next adventure!

I'm delighted to announce that the first volume of The Dolmen Arch, my reconstruction of an early 20th century American Druid correspondence course, is back in print in paperback format. Here's the blurb: 

"Based on a correspondence course circulated among American students of Druidry in the early 20th century, and reconstructed from the surviving fragments by widely respected Druid and occultist John Michael Greer, the Dolmen Arch is a comprehensive course of Druid occultism and nature spirituality, containing detailed instruction in meditation, ritual, healing, enchantment, and initiation, along with extensive papers on Druid philosophy and the hidden meanings of the Welsh legends of the Mabinogion, and much more. This first volume contains the complete instructional packets for the four grades of the Lesser Mysteries-the Gradd y Newyddian (Grade of the Novice), Gradd y Damcaniwr (Grade of the Theoretician), Gradd yr Ymarferiwr (Grade of the Practitioner) and Gradd yr Athroniwr (Grade of the Philosophizer)-comprising more than 120,000 words of occult instruction."

The second volume will be following in due time, now that the original hardback edition is sold out. 

Interested? You can order a copy here if you live in the United States or from your favorite online bookseller anywhere else. 

I learned this morning via an email from a friend and fellow initiate that John Gilbert, who brought me into the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) and initiated me into the whole series of esoteric orders and traditions connected to it, passed away on Monday. 

I met John by way of one of those improbable cascades of events you can't get away with if you're writing fiction. I had encountered a reference to AODA in a book on American Druid groups and had tried in vain to get in touch with it.   He was at that time the president of the American Tarot Association, and I wrote to him to ask about being a presenter at a Tarot event hosted by the ATA in Portland, Oregon. After we'd talked about other things via email, I decided that since he was very knowledgeable about the US occult scene, I would ask him if he knew anything about AODA. He responded, "Why, yes.  I'm the acting Scribe of AODA these days." 

As the saying goes, things proceeded from there. 

We only met in person a few times, but we corresponded extensively via email for many years. In the process, I came to realize that John was a bridge to a world that I scarcely knew anything about back then -- the world of traditional American occultism. Born in 1938, he became active in that world when it was still thriving, and remained active all through the long years when so many people lost interest in anything that didn't have a pedigree from overseas.  He studied with Juliet Ashley and Rhodonn Starrus (Matthew Shaw), received the highest degrees of initiation in AODA, the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, the Order of Modern Essenes, and the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, and was consecrated a bishop in the Universal Gnostic Church. He spent years trying to interest other people in these traditions, with very limited success.  Toward the end of his life, as his energy waned, he quietly wound up those efforts and focused his remaining time on his family. 

To him, and to the traditions and teachings he passed on to me, I owe more than I can possibly say. 

Farewell, John. May the Great Ones welcome you into the halls of Light. 

Longtime reader and commenter Linda Shekinah and a group of others have launched a fundraising drive for a plant sanctuary and farm in central Vermont,  Locust Creek Plant Haven.  It's a well-established sanctuary, in existence for 11 years now, and they're hoping to raise funds to identify endangered plants on their habitat, begin the process of becoming certified forest growers for endangered medicinal herbs, and expand their existing preschool playgroup into a full-fledged forest school that will bring children into contact with nature. 

This strikes me as a practical and well-thought-out project that will address several significant needs. I encourage any of my readers who are interested to check out their funding page here, and consider chipping in some support for the project. Real change doesn't happen by way of all-at-once transformations, but through specific, focused projects that start the ball rolling in the right direction, and it looks to me as though this is a good example. 

I'm delighted to announce that Miskatonic Books is now accepting preorders for the second volume of The Dolmen Arch, my reconstruction of an early 20th century correspondence course in Druid occultism. This volume contains the three grades of the Greater Mysteries, the Gradd y Gwyddon y Ffordd (Grade of the Loremaster of the Path), the Gradd y Gwyddon y Cylch (Grade of the Loremaster of the Circle), and Gradd y Gwyddon Rhydd (Grade of the Free Loremaster). Here's the table of contents: 

Gradd y Gwyddon y Ffordd:
Healing, Magic, and Initiation
The Tree of Light
Introduction to the Art of Druid Healing
Introduction to the Art of Druid Enchantment
Introduction to the Art of Druid Initiation
The Mabinogion: Lludd and Llefelys
Druid Philosophy: Non-Human Beings
The Magical Memory: The Laws of Memory
Completion Exercises: The Doctrine of One

Gradd y Gwyddon y Cylch:
The Cycle of the Cantrefs
The Magic of the Grail
The Art of Druid Healing
Practical Enchantment
The Game of the Cantrefs
The Mabinogion: The Dream of Macsen Wledig
Druid Philosophy: The Seven Cosmic Laws
The Magical Memory: A System of Memory
Competion Exercises: Mastering the Opposites

Gradd y Gwyddon Rhydd:
The Cycle of the Cantrefs in History and Initation
A Guide to Initiation in the Dolmen Arch Tradition
The Secret Work of the Grail
The Initiatory Game of the Cantrefs
The Mabinogion: The Tale of Taliesin
Druid Philosophy: The Powers of Mind
Addendum to Druid Philosophy: Practical Mentalism
The Magical Memory: Practical Memory
Completion Exercises: The Way of the Dolmen Arch

It's better than 100,000 words of instruction, covering a vast amount of material -- and if you preorder, there's a discount.  The ordinarily gorgeous illustrated limited hardback edition will be US$65 when it's published, but you can preorder it here for US$60.  The insanely gorgeous leatherbound tray-cased deluxe limited edition with the dolmen on the cover in actual stone -- no, I'm not kidding -- will be US$395 when it's published, but you can preorder it here for US$359. Delivery will be November of this year. (And if you haven't picked up Volume 1 yet, there are still a few copies of the limited hardback edition here, and a very few copies of the deluxe edition here.)

In the course of the ongoing conversation over on my blog, the Druid organization Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF) came up for discussion. Quite a few people mentioned that they had been members of ADF but left the organization, most of them recently -- and one of my longtime readers and students mentioned that he's long been interested in the religious dimension of Druidry and is looking to set up an organization for people who share that interest. That got a lively response from the former ADF members, and the questions that came up immediately were: 

Why did each person join ADF in the first place?

Why did they leave? 

That's what this post is for: a frank discussion of what attracted people to ADF and what convinced them to quit. Full disclosure here: I'm also a former ADF member, though I left quite a while ago, and I'll be adding my own reflections to the conversation. 

I'm well aware that this is a topic about which some people -- notably those who are still members of ADF -- may have strong feelings, and may not express those with the courtesy and thoughtfulness I expect from my commentariat. For that reason, any attempt at trolling, concern trolling, derailing, flamebaiting, or other bits of online gamesmanship will be deleted. This post is a place for those of us who have had experiences with a troubled Druid organization to talk about those experiences, so that a different organization can learn from them. Those who don't want to participate in that conversation are welcome to go somewhere else -- and those who might want to interfere with that conversation are welcome to go shinny up a stump. 'Nuf said. 

I'm delighted to report that the first volume of The Dolmen Arch, my reconstruction of an early 20th century Druid Revival correspondence course, is now in stock at Miskatonic Books. It's gorgeously bound and laid out, illustrated -- and, yes, packed with meditations, teachings, and occult exercises.   

The second and final volume is now in press -- I've already done the page proofs and so it should be just a matter of months before it's available. I'll post something here as soon as I get advance ordering information. I'm very pleased to see this project in print; it's the result of quite a few years of work on my part, and I think readers will agree that it provides a very rich and effective system of Druid philosophy and practice, one that covers quite a bit of ground not explored elsewhere. 

 If you've already ordered a copy, it'll be in the mail within 48 hours.  If you haven't, well, there are still some left, but I'd be very surprised if they last all that long. You can place an order here if you're interested.

(With thanks to reader Lady Cutekitten for the title)

I've been asked by several readers over on the blog about the recent blowup in the Druid organization ADF (that's Ar nDraiocht Fein if you're wondering, Irish for "Our Own Druidry") and, since that's not relevant to the theme of this week's blog post, I figured I'd take the discussion over here. 

What I know about the matter is this. In a book published several years ago, a woman accused the late Neopagan leader and ADF founder Isaac Bonewits of molesting her when she was a child of six. Two weeks ago, five senior ADF members abruptly resigned, citing the lack of responsiveness to that accusation as one of a long list of reasons for their resignation. Last week the Mother Grove -- the board of directors of the organization -- announced that they were formally repudiating Bonewits, dismissing him from his posthumous role of "Beloved Ancestor." The Mother Grove claimed that they had received other accusations of misbehavior on Bonewits' part and cited these as reasons for their actions. The result has been a great deal of anger and bad feeling on all sides, with one side arguing that concern for victims of sexual abuse should be paramount,  while the other argues that condemning him without a trial on the basis of mere accusation is exactly the modality of the "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s, which destroyed so many innocent people's lives. 

Myself, I have no dog in this fight. I joined ADF just after the turn of the millennium, and quit shaking my head a few years later; I thought the ritual and religious aspects of the organization had a great deal of promise but the organizational structure was the most dysfunctional I'd ever seen in action -- it's no exaggeration to say that Bonewits and the other founding members came up with a scheme that combines all the downsides of hierarchy and democracy, while providing none of the advantages of either. I had several interactions with Isaac Bonewits later on, when I was head of AODA, and we were civil to each other but I won't claim that I liked the man; it was kind of hard to forget that he spent much of his career spewing insults at the kind of Druidry I love and practice.

With regard to the accusations against him, that's not something I'm qualified to assess. I do know that quite literally every time I was around him for more than a minute or so, I got to watch him trying to put the moves on some woman, and I don't recall ever seeing him take a simple "no" for an answer. The guy was frankly a creep. On the other hand, I never saw him make a play for anyone who wasn't obviously adult.

Whatever the truth of that issue, though, on a magical level ADF has probably signed its own death certificate. You don't turn somebody into a "Beloved Ancestor" and spend a decade making offerings to his spirit, then suddenly turn around and give him the bum's rush -- especially when you've made him a central figure in the ritual for ADF's attempt to create an initiatory tradition. (That's a flustered cluck all its own, but we can leave it aside for now.) That's perhaps the most effective way I can think of to create a wrathful spirit: empowered by a decade of offerings, linked closely to the egregor of your organization, and now enraged by the organization's 180-degree turn...oog. Whatever ADF's principal fissures are -- I have my guesses, but we'll see -- I'd expect to see the organization splitting wide open along those in the very near future. 

It's unfortunate. As I noted above, the ritual and religious aspects of the organization were quite good, and if they hadn't been saddled with a great deal of unhelpful organizational baggage, ADF might have been around for the long haul. As it is, with the Neopagan movement generally in a state of accelerating decline, I expect to see it added to the long list of defunct American alternative spiritual movements in the not too distant future.