Druidcraft: The Magic of Wicca and Druidry

Each tale is followed by a dialogue between a teacher and a pupil. The dialogue is a highly effective method of teaching – it was used in ancient Greece, and is well-known as the teaching method favoured by Socrates, in what has come to be known as the Socratic Dialogue. It was also used by the Druids and in Irish texts such a dialogue is known as a ‘Colloquy’, the most famous of which recounts the conversation between two poet-shamans in The Colloquy of the Two Sages.

Practical

After the Colloquy, the practical section of the lesson suggests ways in which you can work with the ideas presented. Just as the stories are not set in stone, neither are these. I see Druidcraft as a path of freedom and creativity. Both Wicca and Druidry offer tools, perspectives and sources of inspiration for us to craft our own practice. We can continue to honour tradition, while also honouring our own gifts and needs, making use of the materials and inspiration available, not only here, but also in the wonderfully varied worlds of Wicca, Druidry and allied subjects.

History

At the conclusion of each chapter, the history section answers the question: ‘Where is all this coming from?’ As you will see, the material presented is based on solid facts and historical sources. At the end of the book there is a Resource section which provides notes and further avenues for study.

Avronelle

I have named our school ‘Avronelle’, an old name for the land around a great chalk figure in Sussex – the Long Man of Wilmington. But Avronelle is really somewhere in the Otherworld, somewhere far away, but also very close. It is a place beside the sea, a place that can lead you to cross the threshold between the Known and the Unknown, so that new energy, new ideas can flow into your life as easily as the tide washes back and forth across the shoreline …

Chapter Two (#ulink_fe03f048-e5b3-5054-acc4-aad2872381cd)

The Secret of the Returning Tide (#ulink_fe03f048-e5b3-5054-acc4-aad2872381cd)

The Ways of Blessing (#ulink_fe03f048-e5b3-5054-acc4-aad2872381cd)

Let me dip thee in the water,

Thou yellow beautiful gem of power!

In water of purest wave,

Which pure was kept by Brighid.

A blessing on the gem,

A blessing on the water,

And a healing of all bodily ailments

To each suffering creature!

from The Silver Bough, (ed. Marian McNeill)

Druidcraft can be seen as both a spiritual path and a path of magic. The art of living well involves knowing how to be both active and passive – how to engage with the world and contribute to it, and how to relax and let life flow around you. It is the same with the art of magic. It involves learning how to be passive or receptive – how to let life’s blessings flow effortlessly towards you – and how to be active – how to influence your life positively to become a force for good, for creativity and healing in the world.

The blessing above is an ancient one, and was used in Ireland and Scotland to charge magically both crystals and water for healing. Learning how to bless and be blessed is the first step in learning how to become a magician.

THE BARD’S TALE

Imagine that you have just arrived for the first time at Avronelle. You are shown into a thatched roundhouse, and you seat yourself beside the fire. Gradually, you allow yourself to relax completely. As you do so, a Bard picks up his harp and plays for a while until you feel yourself in that wonderful state halfway between the world of this life and the world of dreams. Then he begins his tale:

The Story of the Selkie

On the islands of the Shetlands and the Outer Hebrides it was considered that a great misfortune would befall you if you ever killed a seal – whether by accident or with ill intent. Seals were thought to be magical creatures that brought blessings to the sea and to the land, and it was even believed that some clans were descended from seals – way back in the distant past when animals and humankind could speak together, and shared the world as one. But there are many tales of humans, both men and women, who in later times enslaved seals and took them as their spouse, to keep their homes and bear them children.

These were no ordinary seals. They were magical creatures part human, part seal and they were known as silkies or selkies. Every year at Midsummer’s Eve, or at Bealteinne Eve, a dozen of them would swim ashore at midnight, peeling off their silver skins, leaving them on the rocks, to become men and women for a while, and they would dance together in a circle in the moonlight. This dance would be led by a mysterious old man, a wizard, who would chant and lead the rhythms, until at last the seals would pair off (for there were six males and six females) to make love beside the sea, and beneath the moonlight. Then they would climb back into their silver skins and return to the sea, the women carrying the next brood of selkies within their wombs.

One year an old fisherman, Taggart, had been gathering cockles amongst the rocks, and had fallen asleep on his jacket as the sun was setting. He awoke at midnight to see the mysterious dance taking place in the moonlight, and he was captivated by the selkies’ beauty. Each was fair and tall, with fine golden hair. And the eyes of each one shone with a radiance and a knowledge of both land and sea that was as beautiful as it was uncanny.

The dance over, the thirteenth member of the party, the Cunning Man a-centre strode swiftly away from the beach, soon to disappear in the distance. Taggart could hardly believe his eyes when he saw six couples walk hand in hand to different parts of the beach, until at last they lay down together, entwining themselves in warm and passionate embraces. Speechless, with eyes wide and mouth half-open, Taggart watched the scene, until eventually each selkie walked to their little pile of crumpled silver skin that lay on the rocks, climbed into it, at once transforming themselves into a seal which then slid gracefully into the sea, diving and disappearing without trace.

But there was one selkie who could not become a seal again. She looked in vain for her skin, but could not find it. Taggart stepped forward from his hiding place in the rocks, startling her with his sudden appearance. He had hidden her skin, and now held it in his hands. Her clear dark eyes fixed him with a steady gaze and she simply held out her arms to him, and said, ‘Please give my skin to me. Without it I cannot return to the sea.’

‘Fair woman,’ Taggart said, ‘Don’t go back to the sea. You are so beautiful that I have fallen in love with you, and I want you to be my wife. Stay with me here and marry me.’

‘I cannot stay too long on land,’ she replied, ‘for my skin goes dry and cracks, and I yearn for the sea.’ But Taggart insisted, and finally she agreed to stay with him for seven years, so long as she could then return to the sea where she belonged.

Nine months later she bore a child, and Taggart never knew whether he or her selkie partner was the father. But the lad was fine and strong, and the mother and child loved each other with a fierce love that both pleased and troubled the fisherman, who had hidden her skin amongst the cottage thatch.

At the end of her seventh year upon dry land, the selkie asked her husband for her skin. ‘I must return to the sea now,’ she said sadly, for she loved her son so dearly she could not bear the thought of leaving him, and she even felt a fondness and concern for Taggart, though hardly love.

But to her surprise, Taggart’s response was swift and brutal: ‘How can you ask this?’ he roared. ‘Don’t you love your husband and child enough to stay with them?’

‘Of course I do,’ she pleaded, ‘but look at my skin – it is peeling and cracking. And look at my eyes that weep continually. If I do not return I will die before long.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Taggart, who slammed the door and walked towards his boat in a fury. Their son watched his mother sobbing by the kitchen table, and having heard their argument knew what he must do. Without hesitation, he made sure his father was out of sight, then climbed up into the thatch and carefully removed his mother’s sealskin. He marvelled at the way it shone in the sunlight, and at its smoothness to the touch. He ran to his mother and said, ‘Here, put this on and go before he returns!’

Looking through tear-stained eyes at her son, she knew he was right and yet she could not bear to leave him. But she followed him as he hurried her to the seashore. There she unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the sand. At that moment they heard a furious cry of ‘No!’ and they turned to see Taggart running towards them shouting over and over again ‘No! No!’

She looked at her son. ‘Go!’ he shouted at her – with love not fury. Quickly she stepped into her silver suit, lunged at the water, and within a moment was gone.

But every night thereafter a seal would swim to the shore beside their house and leave two large fish on the flat rocks there. And every night both Taggart and the boy would sit as the sun set to watch the seal arrive, and for a moment the seal would gaze at them with her large dark eyes, and tears would seem to fall from them.

THE COLLOQUY

As the Bard finishes his tale, he plays again upon his harp, until you awake as if from a dream.

‘You will find your teacher by the seashore,’ he tells the assembled company, and so, without a word, you leave the roundhouse with your fellow pupils and take the path down to the beach. It is evening, and as you walk you can see the moon rising in the sky. You pass the tall Scots pines that lie beyond the last of the houses of Avronelle, and looking back you see their lights twinkling in the growing darkness. Ahead of you lies wildness and the vast expanse of ocean. You continue walking, down along the steep path through the gorse bushes, until at last you are by the seashore.

Standing alone, her figure outlined by the silver moonlight on the water, is your teacher – Elidir. You and your fellow pupils sit on the smooth rocks around her, and she invites a young man to step forward. His name is Brendan. Elidir unfurls a rug embroidered with Celtic knotwork and together they sit down and begin a conversation – a formal discussion between teacher and pupil that is known as a Colloquy.

‘I’m glad you’ve come here now – on such a beautiful night. This is the best place to learn about the magic of Druidcraft,’ begins Elidir. ‘Here, at every moment, Nature shows to you the fundamental law of life and of magic – the Law of the Returning Tide.’ For a moment, Elidir is silent, and you find yourself watching the gentle surf, listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves upon the beach.

Then Elidir continues. ‘The Law of the Returning Tide says that whatever you cast into the sea of life returns to you – often changed, often in an unrecognizable form, but nevertheless what comes to you in your life is usually the direct result of what you have given out into the world. Most people are only vaguely aware of this law, or don’t fully accept it, but magicians use it all the time. They deliberately and consciously project positive ideas, energies, images, feelings, thoughts, prayers, chants and spells into the world, knowing fully that they will reap the benefits of these – sometimes quickly but sometimes not for years or even lifetimes. Using your knowledge of this law and the techniques of Druidcraft you can actually work at creating your future lives.’

Brendan speaks: ‘Are you saying that peoples’ lives are simply the result of their past thoughts and actions – that we all create our own reality?’

Elidir smiles at Brendan, but her smile carries a look of sadness in it, ‘I can see that you have thought about this idea,’ she says. ‘It is true that we do create our own reality – that how we experience the world is made up of how we think, feel and act, and the result of those thoughts, feelings and actions as they play out in our lives. But if you believe that is all there is to reality, then you are accusing most of the people in the world of being responsible for their own suffering – all the adults and children dying of illness or starvation, all the people caught up in genocide and armed conflict, anyone who is suffering in whatever way. The fact is that not only do we create our own reality, but we create other peoples’ reality too. Our experience, our lives, are made up of a mixture of influences and events that we have created, and influences and events that others have created as well. It is just too simple to say ‘we create our own reality’. We are social and active beings, and we have an effect on the world and the people around us, just as they have an effect on us. So the people in a famine, for example, however much they may be busy creating positive thoughts and feelings, are caught up in a current that is bigger than their own – they are in a group reality caused by the weather, and economic and political conditions. We live in a sea of consciousness and experience, and we often have a great deal of influence over our immediate environment – the patch of sea around us – but sometimes deep ocean currents can sweep us away or change our lives forever.’

She pauses for a moment, as if to gather her thoughts, not looking at Brendan now, but at the ocean, then she continues, ‘Once you understand that we create our own reality and are part of a collective reality too, that we each contribute to other people’s realities as well as our own, then you can understand the Law of the Returning Tide. It is a law that is played out for us in the world of Nature around us all the time: we reap what we sow, and the harvest from the seeds we have sown is not just ours. This law has been expressed by different spiritual teachers for thousands of years. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the god Thoth says, “Truth is the harvest scythe. What is sown – love or anger or bitterness – that shall be your bread. The corn is no better than its seed, then let what you plant be good.” Thousands of years later, Jesus said, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The Eastern idea of karma conveys the same idea: that, to a great extent, our present experience is the consequence of our past thoughts, feelings and actions.

‘Druidcraft takes this idea and applies an understanding and practice of magic to it – the idea of consciously sowing seeds for ourselves and others. Once you realize that you help to create other peoples’ reality, you become socially and environmentally responsible – and you do magic not only for yourself, but also for others and the world.

‘I have used the analogy of the sea and the returning tide, but another useful analogy involves seeing everything in life connected by an invisible web. The old Anglo-Saxon magicians called this “The Web of Wyrd” and the Native American Chief Seattle spoke about the way “All is Connected”. Doing magic involves knowing how to work this web, knowing how to radiate along the web to create beneficial effects for yourself and others. The way we do this in Druidcraft is through the art of blessing. Until you understand the power of blessing this can sound vague and weak. After all, how can simply blessing something make any real difference?’