Beginnings and endings are so often the same thing. Within the pagan calendar, Samhain is regarded as the 'new year' and the period between October 31st and December 21st almost as a time of 'no-time' - a dead, dormant or sleeping period. These things are often thresholds - liminal spaces between two states of being. The ends and beginnings of chapters, and so it was with me - my first conscious footsteps into this tradition happened as my childhood ended.
The very beginning, the first seeds sown, at least as far as Druidry is concerned, probably happened way back in childhood. It is to my maternal grandfather that I owe thanks for the ability to sit still and listen - this was one of the first and most important things he taught me, and his love for the natural world, his ability to give names to the things around us and to show me how they all connected were strands that would later weave into something greater. But if we're talking more conscious steps I think I stumbled and faltered my way through a teenage curiousity and questioning. My adolescent mind would not leave the question alone: "But WHY must we all get jobs and buy houses? WHY must we live this way? Has it never been different?" This led to pushing at boundaries and ultimately into philosophical questioning, looking for any sense of meaning in a world that seemed inherently material. I read voraciously. I visited 'psychic fayres' as they were called in the 90s, with friends, looking for alternatives. Tarot cards. New age practices. Wicca. The thrill of the strange and the 'forbidden' - which of course Wicca is anything but - intrigued 16 year old me. Eventually my friends and I met a Real Life Witch, who graciously humoured us and gave some of the best advice I have ever been given; "Be patient, and learn to meditate. The rest will come".
I have a distinct memory - less than a year later - of being with my friends and holding a Winter Solstice vigil. One of us had gotten hold of a copy of "The 21 lessons of Merlyn" - a book which is more fiction than helpful - and we made our own circle (indoors, of course), lit candles, made a ritual and held a vigil. There were meditations and visualisations. We fell asleep, and woke the next morning with sore throats; we'd placed our candles on plastic pots, they'd burned down and melted the pots as we slept. Lessons were learned.
These first steps were set against a backdrop of exams and cameraderie, but eventually we finished school, got jobs, went to University, moved on. As I moved into my 20s, I was still questioning in much the same way, still reading any alternative spirituality I could find. Eventually I would find an expression of Druidry that fitted my own way of being. Still rooted in tradition, but placing more emphasis on our natural world - wilder and more primal than the pressed linen and dry poetry that I'd seen before. The first time I met 'other' Druids, we made our ritual inside of a gorse bush. My first initiations happened within the stone circles in Wiltshire - Avebury and Stonehenge. Over time, I have come to realise that the 'initiations' - the beginnings, whether consciously marked or not, happen many times over. This act of writing now is another such beginning. Equally as important to me now as that first Winter Solstice, and so it goes. As we spiral through cycles, moving through the year over and over, we repeat the ending and the beginning again and again, and as we do, we learn to navigate the dynamics of ending and beginning. Finishing school. Starting a career. Finding a relationship or spouse. Marriage. Children. Growing. Dying. Firsts and lasts are as essential a part of life as breathing.
So what of this beginning? The last time I wrote like this was maybe 17 years ago. A practice that became deliberately more private, scaled down to let more into my life finds itself looking for expression again. It is my hope not to define Druidry for others to follow, so much as to share a little of what I do and how I feel, and to allow space for others to do the same. In time I would love to hear stories from other people, from other traditions and places, and to give something back in turn.