The Faith Column
Every week a different believer gives the inside track on their religion or philosophy.
The forces of nature
- Posted by Louise Sutherland
- 14 February 2008
Nature is deity to Druids, explains conservationist Louise Sutherland
As a child I was deeply inspired by David Attenborough, Diane Fossey and Jean-Michel Cousteau. It was my admiration of them and what they achieved that made me want to work in conservation. I’m very lucky to work in this field and I’m still passionate about it. How does studying Druidry affect this? Although it wasn’t a conscious decision I made, the two are so interwoven it’s hard to pick the reasons apart to explain it.
I always experienced the world as very alive, and when I discovered the words ‘animism’ and ‘polytheism’ they seemed to describe the way I had always thought. It was a revelation to discover a community of people with a similar perspective on the world. Nature is deity to Druids. All forces of nature; from aspects of human nature like lust, to mountains, rivers, darkness or rain. They are all seen as the expression of a different ‘power of nature’. Some call these deities, some call it spirit, some call it energy, but gloriously there is no pretence of this being the “Truth”. Just a wry acknowledgment of each individual perspective determining the different ways people relate to what’s around them. Essentially Druidry is about an individual’s relationship with the world around them. To study it is to learn to be conscious of what you do, how you touch everything around you, from people to places. You could say it’s that awareness that fuels my work in conservation; if you are aware of a the high nitrates in a river killing the life in it, aware of the loss of dragonflies and wetland plants, the fewer bird species filling our skies, aware of the loss of woodland or species rich grassland, then you try to do something and conservation work is about trying to help, to protect species or recreate habitats.
But Druidry as a religion, in the original sense of the word, from the Latin religio - meaning reverence for the divine, goes deeper than that. Druids are priests of the land, my work in conservation is like a service to the gods of the land. My awe of these many, many different gods, listening them whisper through a landscape, feeling the hum of their energy – urges me to find an honourable response, to facilitate a balance between conflicting needs, try to restore what’s lost because everywhere all of nature is sacred.
A Druid working in conservation or a conservationist studying Druidry, strives to make an honourable relationship with the land. If a ‘conservation attitude’ affects their thinking, that relationship will be about protecting and restoring the sacred, natural biodiversity. All of it, from the ignored and concreted land beneath our pavements, to the stones and sand of the concrete, to the high wild mountains, is so filled with life, song and energy. I feel it move deeply through me, it fills me with reverence and inspiration - I couldn’t do anything but conservation!
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