The following article derives from a talk given by Emma Restall Orr at the
third Oxford Spirit of Peace Conference, on 20 September 2003.
When considering what to discuss at a conference about peace, given that my remit
was simply to speak about Druidry, I found myself uncertain. For to talk about the importance or
relevance of peace within Druidry seems redundant, and to talk of the role of the Druid as
peacemaker equally so. I meditated on the issue, and found myself reaching back through these
poignant words, and walking back through ideas and concepts, I found myself in the midst of one
word: truth. It is about truth that I shall speak mainly today, returning to the issue of peace as I
draw towards the end of my talk.
Where to begin then? Perhaps an unlikely place, but one that is close to my
heart.
The effective practice of spirituality seems to me like a good long marriage. As
one who has married the same man five times over the course of 16 beautiful years, this is an area
where I feel I have a little insight. A strong and lasting marriage is based on three essential
tenets: connection, freedom and ecstasy.
Now, when considering a marriage from a conventional standpoint, many immediately
doubt that the necessary commitment could allow for freedom. Surely instead, their scepticism cries,
the bond brings obligations, chains of restraint, requirements and compromise. As for connection,
while there may well be an overwhelming and glorious sense of coming together at the beginning of a
relationship, soon enough we discover that truly connecting requires us to be fully known and to
know the other, and that can evoke an unbearable vulnerability. What if our partner were to discover
that we are ugly, stupid, incompetent, which on some level perhaps we feel we are? The same is true
for ecstasy. In that first flush of a relationship, we might barely leave the bedroom, making love
at any given opportunity; even the anticipation of meeting is ecstatic. Yet the feelings recede with
familiarity, or so we are told. It is socially acceptable to have sex once or twice a month, for
ecstasy is not expected to last.
Yet none of this speaks of love. And when I use the word love, I use it in a
Druidic sense, and that is not a hippy-dippy spirituality of love and daisies, kitten-soft and
sunshine. In Druidry, love is understood to be an extraordinary power of nature, one that by its
nature can seep into every cell of our body, every corner of our mind or soul, washing through us
with a congruence that utterly saturates our life purpose. Love motivates. It provokes us to work,
to step forward and reach out, to get up and live. It is allows us the strength to express ourselves
through respect, honour, committed and open, shining with life. Yes, love motivates us to make an
effort to understand what relationship is and can be, for its deepest need is to perpetuate
itself.
Filled with love, of course a good marriage is based on those tenets of freedom,
connection and ecstasy. If I take those words one by one, I shall explain what I mean, but let me
return to the initial equation, of successful marriage and spiritual practice.
And here I offer the context of my argument. I am a Druid. Not a member of a
congregation, not one who attends rituals when it fits with my calendar, not one who reads books
about the tradition, but a full-time priest of the Druid tradition. I would acknowledge that the
spiritual heart of the tradition, its essential mysticism, is fundamentally in tune with the
mysticism of any other religion or spirituality, yet I speak here as a Druid. My Druidry gives
language to my experience in a way that describes the distinct nature of the tradition and of my own
practice within it, as an animist, a polytheist, a Pagan, pluralistic through and through. For me
the tradition is the indigenous nature-based religion of these islands of Britain.
So let me then take that first word: connection. Connection is at the very core of
Druidry. So very many people come to me, breathing deeply with relief as they express our Druidry
has given them a sense of connecting to the world around them, feeling for the first time as if they
belong. When people sink into desolation, or get lost in drugs, medication or alcohol, one of the
first things that leaves them is that sense of connection, the toxins leaving a residue, a layer, a
veil that separates them once more from that feeling of connection.
Relationship in an animistic tradition is not just about who we meet and drink tea
with, chatting about our issues and ideas. Relationship is about how we interact with the earth
beneath us, the water that runs from the tap, the rain that soaks us, the wind on our faces, the
wasp, blackbird, oak, moon ... Understanding every part of the environment to be alive with spirit
and purpose, we learn to relate with honour, awake and aware. The more open we are in that
relationship the more likely we are to be touched by it, and to touch in return, to be inspired and
to inspire. In Druidry, we talk of the interaction of spirit with spirit; when this happens with
consciousness, when our very life-energy is touched by the life-energy of another, we are flooded
with the power of awen, inspiration sourced in the divine nature of life itself.
Yet this connection is not possible if we are wearing a guise. Masked in order to
protect ourselves, or to assert that we are something that we are not, that mask acts as a shield to
awen. Only when we are able to express ourselves openly, in our truth, honestly, is there potential
for connection.
The second word is freedom, and this again is a key tenet of Druid spirituality.
As a tradition that seeks inspiration through connection, the expression of that inspiration is as
important an element, and here we speak of our creativity. We learn to explore our self-expression,
finding clarity of soul-intention and allowing our life to be rich with ongoing creativity.
Accepting our own nature, together with the character and quality of our own
creativity, is not always easy. We want to be brilliant, radiant, flawless: beyond criticism or
rejection. We aren’t. Nor is anyone else. Equally hard can be the process of learning to
accept others’ creativity without judgment or competition. We learn not to tolerate what
someone does or makes, but to celebrate this expression of their individuality, and more generally
to celebrate the diversity of all humanity
Accepting too that our creativity is utterly mortal, temporal, transient, is a
critical part of Druidic teaching, allowing us to move with the emerging and receding tides of the
world within and around us. In the rhythms of the tide, we hang onto nothing, releasing all we
create into the cycle of coming and going, living and dying. If we create something that is not
great, we let it go and create again, always conscious of the energy that flows through us.
Expression and acceptance of creativity and its mortality requires, again, the
power of truth. Indeed, without truth, there is no freedom in self-expression nor in the expression
of our creativity.
The third word is ecstasy, and there is no hope or possibility of ecstasy without
truth and honesty. Ecstasy is the energy provoked or exchanged when in freedom we connect, within
ourselves or with others.
In monotheistic mysticism, practice is based on the art of dissolving the self and
merging into pure connection with the All or God. In Druidry, what we are connecting with might be
understood to be deity, or spirit, or nature, the sacred energy of life. Whatever we are seeking to
release ourselves into, to attempt to do so without an intention of truth will either simply never
work or else kick us completely out of the water, unprepared.
We can go on journeys, mediations, visualizations, finding pretty places and
realizations, but without truth, these spiritual adventures don’t bring us close to ecstasy.
They are escapism.
I’ve spoken of truth, yet what do I mean by the concept?
Firstly, as a Pagan, I don’t hold there to be a universal truth. I am not
seeking order or patterns, one god or a fundamental unity, for I see each person to exist within
their own reality, their own world as perception. I might be accused of being a relativist or
subjectivist, yet I see this perspective as simply Pagan. The anarchy of individuality is utterly in
tune with nature’s chaos. Without no list of beliefs to sign up to, Paganism acknowledges that
each and every person has their own truth based on their own life experience.
So what is truth?
Truth is the sharp edge of intention. It can be painful, a harrowing blade, the
scythe of harvest cutting away what is perceived as valuable from the rest. It can be frost, killing
growth, holding us down. The idioms of our language speak of truth as casting light upon a
circumstance. We think of truth as underpinning knowledge, and indeed also as being forged from
knowing. Only when we are clear about a situation, grasping the facts, does truth spill out. Our
clarity floodlights the target, allowing us to hit the mark.
Yet to talk of light provokes the need for balance, entreating us too to think of
the darkness and shadows. Truth is not always light, and in Druidry the power of dark truth is
deeply honoured. Here is truth that is not sourced in knowledge, existing beyond the boundaries of
our understanding.
Dark truth is intuitive truth. Of course, intuition can be wrong, so how can truth
ever come from this dark place? The answer in Druidry takes us back to those three words I raised
earlier. Through connection, given in the vulnerability of complete honesty, found upon a path
unlimited, walked in freedom, we find moments that hit us sharply in the belly or between the eyes,
tripping us with realization. It is experience that roots this truth. We feel the power of
connection, of freedom within us, and the ecstasy offers us its rich dark truth.
If the truth of experience is as transitory as an experience, then the truth of
knowledge is equally flawed by the changing process of ideas, understanding, growth. Further, where
light truth brings a reality into focus, it also allows us potentially to control the situation.
Dark truth does not give us that option. We can have no firm grip on it, for it necessitates our
surrender into the experience of the moment.
Subjective or shared, light or dark, truth is powerful.
Truth can kill.
And in the animistic polytheism of my Druidry, a power of nature that has the
ability to kill is considered deity. The sea, sun, lightning, frost, birthing, these are gods to the
Pagan, but also we look to gods that hold powers of human nature: anger, lust, beauty.
When people talk of what would happen if the old gods were forgotten, the issue
isn’t that the gods would die. It is our own lives that we put at risk. When we no longer
acknowledge the seas as sacred, as deity, we no longer respect them, we are able to pollute them. We
can clear cut the forest when it is not a god to us. The earth abused as mud dries up, becoming
barren, withdrawing her gift of nourishment and fertility, killing. The power of anger or love
dishonoured crashes through us with brutality, yet understanding these as forces of deity we learn
gently to work with them, holding respect and finding the power accessible, valuable. Connected with
the old gods, the gods of nature, both enables and intensifies those three states: connection,
freedom and ecstasy.
Truth is also a deity, a god of the Pagan Druid. It can cut us down, used as a
powerful weapon of destruction, killing and causing killing.
Indeed, it is because of the dangerous nature of this exquisite divine force that
the monists so eagerly seek out a one-truth, a knowing or experience that can be declared
universally valid. The energy of politics, authority, coercion and manipulation comes into play as
this one-truth is then evangelically thrust upon the world. In a pluralist theology, where no
one-truth is acknowledged, truth itself can be honoured simply as a power of nature, ever changing,
with more facets than thoughts can touch.
With respect, then, we hand truth, letting its currents move through us. Gently
place, never ignored or denied, its divine status must never be forgotten.
So do I return to the issue of peace. For only where there is truth, gently
placed, can there be peace.
As to marriage, if we are blessed enough to find someone with whom we can connect,
offering ourselves with complete honesty, walking with freedom, the vows given in marriage before
the gods, the ancestors, the community, are given too before the god of truth.
If we are to walk our path together, hand in hand with the one we love, that god
will guide us to stay strong within his energy and flow. And living in love, the rich dark energy of
love which motivates us so powerfully to pour our inspiration and creativity into relationship,
while walking too in the company of truth, our connection, soul to soul, can intensify
extraordinarily. As the teachings direct us to understand truth more deeply, allowing us to express
our soul-honesty more fully, so are the barriers to love removed, and our connection given
immeasurable freedom.
Life is offered us then simply to explore the realms of ecstasy.
In peace.
Emma Restall Orr
bobcat [at] druidnetwork [dot] org
