The British Druid Order

Greywolf's Lair

• Toad Blessing Day, December 1st November 28, 2023
  A few years ago, a group of BDO members revived a lost ceremony of Toad blessing I’d learned about while researching for the British Druid Order’s distance learning courses. A reference to it appears in Cotton MS Claudius B VII, a manuscript in the British Library that was assembled from earlier materials for Archbishop Matthew […]
• British Druid Order Bardic Course Update Completed! May 3, 2023
  How was everyone’s Calan Mai? My big news for May Day this year is the completion of the three-year-long revision of the British Druid Order’s bardic course. It took that long because there are big changes from the first version, which went online in 2011. One major improvement is that we now include brilliant new […]
• Druidry: A Practical & Inspirational Guide – Updated & In Print! April 28, 2023
  I love books. It's been a dream of mine since I was a kid to see my name on the spine of a really nicely produced hardback book. Well, it took a while, but I finally made it! The first edition of Druidry: A Practical & Inspirational Guide was a modest little paperback that came […]
• Telyn Rawn – The Horse-Hair Harp September 2, 2022
  Writing on music for the British Druid Order's bardic course rekindled a long-standing love of medieval instruments and the enchanting sounds they create. I’ve written previously about my recreation of a ‘lost’ stringed instrument played in medieval Ireland and Wales called the timpan, or tiompan. Encouraged by that reconstruction turning out reasonably playable, thoughts turned […]
• Druidry: A Practical & Inspirational Guide April 26, 2022
  I published a book with the above title back in 2000. That's it on the left. The circumstances under which it was written were, to say the least, unusual. Ellie, my wife of 15 years, was suffering from Acute Myeloid Leukemia. At the time of publication, she was in a London teaching hospital, recovering from […]
• Spring Equinox – Alban Eilir – ‘Birth of the Fresh Quarter’ March 19, 2022
  (The following is extracted from the British Druid Order bardic course, booklet 17) “Harshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses, hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty […]
• Robes & the Modern Druid December 8, 2021
  The question of whether or not to robe for ceremonies is one that often arises amongst newcomers to Druidry, usually accompanied by questions as to what type of robes are appropriate. As with so much else, the answers to these questions vary widely between different Druid groups. The Welsh Gorsedd (founded in 1792) led the way […]
• Druids to present at the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions August 26, 2021
  Druids have (finally) been invited to speak to an audience of leaders from assorted faith communities from around the globe, to share a bit of accurate information about what modern Druids actually do and believe (as opposed to all the nonsense that the popular media typically says about us). Larisa A. White (author of World […]
• Book Review: ‘World Druidry’ by Larisa A. White (2021) July 10, 2021
  Full Title: World Druidry: A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality Author & Publisher: Larisa A. White Publication year: 2021 Format: Hardback or paperback, 322 pages, illustrated with monochrome photographs. Website: https://larisa-a-white.com/worlddruidry.html If you’ve ever wondered what modern Druids believe and what they get up to inspired by their beliefs, then this book is a must […]
• ‘Shamanic’ Druidry April 16, 2021
  From the time I began exploring Druidry in 1974, I have never thought of it as anything other than ‘shamanic.’ I discovered Druidry through Robert Graves’ remarkable book, The White Goddess (3rd edition, 1961). For all its fame in Pagan circles, it is far from an easy read, laden with classical Greek and Roman references, […]