Druid Journal

(This post continues from where the last one left off here.)

When I picked up John Michael Greer’s Druidry Handbook, it was a thunderclap.

I was just curious at first. I’d heard about modern Pagans here and there, but I’d never met one or heard much about what they actually did or believed. At a Borders bookstore in Holyoke, Massachusetts, I could have bought any number of books that day. But I chose this one, and in just a few sittings, I read it from cover to cover. While I didn’t agree with everything in it, the philosophy, the worldview, and the vision of life it offered struck a chord. It presented a path that felt both strange and new, yet old and deeply familiar. It was as though I’d been trying to walk this path my entire life—even making progress—without realizing it was a path.

Once I finished the book, I wanted to find other Druids and practice with them. That search led me to Ellen Evert Hopman, who was kind enough to help me get properly started. I practiced regularly with her group until we had to move away from the area. Ellen embodied the kind of person I aspired to be: an explorer, a researcher, someone with experience and insight, a teacher, and a worker for justice. She was equally at home in the wilderness and in building community. As the founder and leader of the Order of the White Oak, her exhaustively researched books on Paganism and herbology have reached millions. Her example remains an inspiration to me.

In 2009, I met my wife, Alison, who was a Druid as well; and we’ve practiced together ever since. Our shared devotion to the ideals of Druidry has informed all our decisions, large and small. While my journey into Druidry was deeply influenced by literature, Alison’s path took a different route. She first learned about Paganism from friends and began exploring Druidry through the works of authors like Ross Nichols, Emma Restall Orr, Brendan Myers, and Graham Talboys. These writers became her role models, offering prototypes for what a modern Druid could be. For Alison, Druidry emerged as a spiritual path at the intersection of nature, art, and politics—the first she found that embraced all three without requiring her to reject or downplay any of them.

We express our spirituality and build community through research, art, publishing, teaching, and volunteering.

• We’ve volunteered with the salmon program at Seattle Parks for over a decade, talking with nearly a thousand people every year. I’ve taught computer science to high school students, and Alison serves the community through her work in a local art museum.
• Alison has published poetry and essays in national magazines and is a prize-winning watercolorist and photographer, while also conducting transformative research into Celtic spirituality and metaphor.
• In my professional work at Amazon and other companies, I’ve earned six patents in computational linguistics, and helped transform speech recognition technology from a niche application to something most people use daily on their phones and Alexa-like devices. I’ve also published multiple papers on language and natural language understanding, and am preparing to publish on the history of languages and cultures, including longstanding mysteries like the Voynich manuscript.
• Our blogs have reached tens of thousands of people, sharing insights on spirituality, linguistics, and creativity. This itself is a form of community-building. (It’s how we met!)
• We’re vegetarians, and live simply in a small house surrounded by trees, striving to align our lives with our values.

We are not perfect Druids by any means—we still have a 20-year-old gas-powered car, for example. But we acknowledge our shortcomings, face them squarely, and strive to improve. To us, Druidry is not about perfection but about embodying and continually refining an archetype.

The Druid Archetype: Its Core and Purpose

So we return to the original question: What is the purpose of this archetype in my life, in the lives of others, in society, and in the broader world?

I believe the Druid exists to foster transformation in the community. Let’s break that down:

• Fostering. Teaching, raising up, and bringing about change. A Druid is not a Druid if they do not research, learn, and above all, teach.
• Transformation. A Druid is not a mere preserver of tradition or a maintainer of existing social structures. Instead, the Druid seeks out what needs changing and works the necessary magics and mechanisms to bring it about. They renew, reform, regreen, and resurrect.
• Community. A Druid is not a hermit or a solitary figure serving only themselves. While the Druid may—and indeed must—venture into the wilderness to seek knowledge, that knowledge must be brought back and shared. The Druid’s natural state is arguably one of travel: into the wilderness, back into the heart of society, and then out again, as the need dictates. (One of Gandalf’s elven names is Mithrandir, the Grey Pilgrim.) A shaman, a transformer, to be sure, but one as comfortable at the hub of society as at the fringe.

The Druid archetype exists as a call to this unique path of service. All the varied examples of the Druid — Doyle, Kenobi, Jung, Gandalf, Tolkien, and Merlin — point the way. Seeking the archetype, even if we never reach it, transforms and heals lives and societies. It is a noble path, and endless, and eternal.

Yet this is not the only path. There are other archetypes, each with their own purpose. For example, what of the Witch? What role does this archetype play in the community? What wisdom does it have for the searcher? What is its place in the broader tapestry of Pagan spirituality, and the world at large?

We’ll explore that question in the next post.