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This week's Faith Column is written by Damh who devotes his first blog to explaining how his interest in paganism was awakened
Since I was a child I’ve loved Fairy tales - stories of myth, old folk tales of the land, stories of fairies, giants, heroes, and magic. I always felt there were places on this island where another reality was close by, and that doorways existed to these other realms that coexist on the same land as our own, but at a different vibration.
To help discover what you are, you often have to realise what you are not. I remember going to Sunday School as a child. Each week we learned a different quote from the Bible. I was learning about the religion of a land that felt so far away from me. I also thought it strange that the Bible was seen as a spiritual book that contained deep religious meaning, but the old tales of the Gods of this island were just ‘myth’, and most of those weren’t even mentioned at school. I saw around me that some people seemed to have a fear of the unknown held within these old stories – almost as if we shouldn’t look too deeply or we might find something distasteful, or even ‘evil’. But I did look, and I found a place of beauty and wonder, a hidden but well-trodden pathway through a woodland that lead to a clearing in the forest.
There I met Herne, the old Pagan Horned God, I talked with Blodeuwedd the Owl, and she told me her mysteries, I looked to the Sun and found Lugh, and within the crescent Moon I heard the voice of Ceridwen, Goddess of Bards. I learned to love the drama of folk custom, to revere the Spirits of Nature, and to write and sing of that love through my songs and growing interest in the Bardic tradition within Druidry.
People often write of the moment of realisation of their own spirituality as ‘coming home’, and it certainly felt like this for me. The more I explored my new home, this island’s mysteries, the more I found, and the more I fell in love. In a human world that often seems so clinical and separate from nature, the path of Druidry heals that separation. As I looked deeper I didn’t find anything distasteful or ‘evil’ at all, anything but! I found my place within life. I discovered my relationship with the animals, plants and minerals around me, and found that everything I did affected something else, that I was a part of all life, and with that realisation also came responsibility to be more aware of my actions and consumer decisions. The world through the eyes of a Druid is a magical place of wonder and beauty, of colour, and life.
For further information about Druidry click here and for Damh’s personal website click here.
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