Spiritual Practice

I would have to say I felt the call of the Druids from early childhood.  I cannot tell you why, but from very early in my development I have been drawn to them, despite the fact that I was baptized and raised a Catholic.  Both my parental ancestry comes from parts of Wales and Ireland, so when I could no longer remain compliant within the Catholic church in 1992, I turned my attention there.

I had decided to look into a Welsh oriented pantheon, but by a random occurrence I was in a pagan store and saw a statue of the Morrigan, a typically Irish Goddess.  She called to me, and I felt a kinship, so invited her to my home.  From there I studied information on her and her attributes, one in particular of being the patron Goddess of Sailors and service men.  As a sailor this hit home.  I also found connection to Dagda, especially for issues of male energy work, protection and roles of being a father..  Llew, the sun God, for his lust for life and many skills as well as Brigit the Goddess of hearth, home, and craft were also added.  I began to invite them on a regular basis to my altar and attempted to grow a friendship.  To this day they remain as my central group of deities, with the addition of Cernunnos.  Through my ritual work as our gatekeeper, as well as his attributes as a deity of the forest, I believe he rounds out the group.

From 1997 to 2004 I practiced a solitary path. Mostly this was due to being in the Navy, and often away from home, but also because I knew of no other Druids at that time.  I began to resonate with the fact that three pillars of thought seemed to permeate the Druidic methods: service to the community, study and education, and spiritual practice.  Three things that I try to maintain in my life.  I believe in order to present Druidism to the greater population and be granted the same respect that main stream religions have, we must incorporate these three ideals.

It was just after 2004 that I discovered ADF.  I was feeling like something was missing in my path, and that was guidance, and knowledge.  I became a member, and was thrilled to giddiness at the volumes of information available. After finding little or no credible sources in the local pagan shops, the mass of information available to ADF members as well as its networks of members was amazing.  After absorbing all I could, I decided to begin the DP journey and though  I fell off the cart a few times over my time with ADF, for various reasons peacekeeping missions over seas, divorce, you name it, I still persisted.  

At this point in 2006, I had been a solitary for quite some time, and was looking for more. I took the leap and with the help of two others co-founded a proto-grove in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada.  Originally it was called the Order of Nova Scotia Druids Proto-grove, but do to some structuring within ADF we were asked to take the word order out of the name.  We became the Grove of Nova Scotia Druids.  It at its heart a Celtic focus, accepting and honouring any deities from the Celtic pantheons.  Morrigan, Dagda, Cernunnos, Brigid and Llew all became the initial deities of our focus in ritual.

Within the Grove, much of my focus within the grove has been establishing what I would term as “kitchen table druidism”.  No organization can accommodate everyone.  As unfortunate a fact as that might be, we wanted a spirituality that was as much an organization as it was a sense of family. 

It was decided that just doing the High days was not enough. We wanted and needed our high days to become rallying points for the community, opportunities to educate not only the non-pagan community about us, but to allow them to participate and see us as we are.  Each high day is an opportunity to teach our young the importance of the day and deities involved.  With that in mind we have taken our high day ritual requirements very seriously and expanded them to include games, feasts, music, and a clan feel for many of the rituals.  

Over the last few years, on behalf of the grove I have committed myself to many outreach opportunities.  We host coffee talks to discuss various points on religion today, we have appeared on a local radio show a number of times to promote both the grove and paganism in general.  Most of us do volunteer work in our community.  

In 2015, the Grove got its Chartered status, through ADF, and continues to grow.