Spirituality for Living

To begin, Shintoism is not a religion, and yet it is. It’s the native belief system of Japan, and still in a sense very much alive and well, but it doesn’t identify itself as a body. Shintoism focuses on this life. They aren’t concerned with teachings to earn your way into an afterlife. Their rites [...]

Druidism both is, and isn’t, a religion. It originated in a culture that didn’t originally have the Roman Catholic view of religion. It‘s perhaps more accurate to say it’s a wisdom tradition, sort of like a western Taoism.
Shamanistic? Yes, in a sense, but not as strictly grounded as that. They had a long standing, and [...]

Sort of like Indian mysticism, the Druid recognized that spirituality isn’t a single path. They acknowledged three. The Druid, as we know the word, who was the keeper of observances, and the village Sage. The Ovate who was more like the Native American Shaman, seeker of spirits and signs, and psychopomp, or spirit guide to the [...]

The Druids tended to live outside of tribal holdings, and not in the walled villages. Bards tended to live in them, but move from one village to another, and Ovates tended to live in places of power, but not natural power per se.
Druids lived near their sacred groves. In border spots like caves, Ovates focused [...]

Divination by Druids was to see the spiritual forces in the world, and it was often for healing. They didn’t see disease as a punishment from God that you should just take because you deserve it. They saw it as an imbalance. So any plague, or famine, or what not, was cause for divination, and [...]

It’s hard to say much that’s absolute about Druid creed, because as part of their creed they were not absolutist thinkers. The culture the Druids would be most like is the Magi, and they would often later be called Magi in Latin records of them. They were rationalists, but not materialists.
Before the advent of empirical [...]

The Druids were not a dogmatic people, and it would be entirely reasonable, if you see gnosis in nature, to adopt the Druid name. You would not dishonour the ancestors having no static doctrine, and gaining wisdom from observances of nature, and keeping of human history. To declare yourself a Druid is merely to say [...]

Those into what can perhaps most broadly be called “necromantic” practices, are not at odds with Druid thinking. Mediumship, or communing with the dead, and giving the dead place and respect were quite acceptable. Mediumship would have been undertaken by the Ovates. In our modern technological age, not only do we not adequately respect life, [...]

We are discussing necromancy. Keep in mind, I can discuss many things that I may or may not practice. Necromancy is actually very simple, as well as being highly controversial. It has been called a lot of things, and maybe one of the clearest is bone reading. Do any of you have in your possession [...]

Dragon lore is very old. It actually even extends into human prehistory. All cultures across the world speak of a time before the form and order of today’s world was “fixed”, and of powers dwelling in the world that predate humanity in both sentience and insight. Many of these still exist in the human species [...]