Over the last couple of months, I have heard two terms getting tossed around quite a bit in the blogosphere – “Contemplative Druidry” and “Practical Druidry”. Well, I decided to have a little peek around these and see what I might come up with – and figure out how that relates to me. What I got into was something I was not quite expecting, and at times felt that I was in just a touch over my head with the topic depth.

During this little academic (at times) exercise, I thought it would be a good idea to encapsulate the entire endeavor in journal entries. I started this search at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend with the full intent to have something that was quick and simple to publish. Instead, I found myself approaching the two points from a manner that resembled some of my larger research paper assignments from my Masters of Business Administration degree. As I type this, I am reading through a few pages of what I have written and trying to find a summation that encompasses both what I have written and the frame of mind that I found myself in. The following is my best attempt at accomplishing just that.

My first search walked me down the direction of “Practical” Druidry. Before setting out, I decided to try and come up with my own definition/idea of what the term meant to me – and then lay that as a comparison against what I had found. Working from the idea of practicality, I set upon a boundary for this term:

Practical Druidry is the physical motions of putting one’s Druidic beliefs and philosophy into motion, such as the moment when an individual lets go of logical perspective when creating something, and divines inspiration from the Awen. In this manner, an individual ceases to think of what they are doing, and allows their reflexes and intuition to drive the process forward.

Not precisely a stellar definition, but its enough for me to intuit where my mindset is concerning this term. I started my search with Google, utilizing the term itself “Practical Druidry”. The first link took me to the website for my Druidry Order – the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.  The link was entitled “Practical Spirituality” and written by Steve Hounsome. I will freely admit, I do not know the name or the individual whatsoever – so the writing was something completely new for me. The article, it turns out, was a refreshing look at a principle I had already started to put into play:  finding the sacred in my own daily life and work.  Hounsome elaborates:

When we look at our life as a sacred principle, we come to the point where we begin to see something of that sacred, or Divine, in all that we do. As such, we can be as much a Shaman, Witch, Druid or whatever when we are sitting behind our desk at work as we are when we are seated in our ceremonial circle.

I have elucidated upon this quite a few times here on the blog.

I’ve mentioned before, my job with the college is Data Analysis – essentially finding patterns in data that is gathered and compiled by the college. Its actually a lot fun – I get to try and talk to the database, and learn its query language, I get to look at the data that gets compiled, and try to find patterns to present to upper management. The challenge is not to present the material with my own bias.  (…)  To be completely honest, I never dreamed that my Druidry studies would show me a new way of looking at how my daily life ties so closely to my own immediate surroundings and environment. There are days that I wish I had uncovered this way of looking at Life when I was far younger – but then if I did…I wouldn’t be who I am now. (Barcharts, Data, Leaves and Colors….)

In a manner of speaking, I am already trying to stretch my legs into the territory of “Practical Druidry” – finding ways to relate aspects of my everyday job, where I search for patterns and logical comparisons between sub-populations of the collegiate student body – with my continual mode of learning about how to utilize my Druidry lessons into finding these comparisons.

I was also surprised at how different my starting definition was from what the article had noted – and how similar it had turned out to be as well. The differences were by no means a rocking of the world for me – but the similarities were certainly not close enough to say that I had bulls-eyed the target, so to speak. There was certainly a large amount for food for thought in each of those notations. And that food I am continuing to chew to this day, slowly devouring the essence of what I am gathering, while savoring the magickal taste of doing this search in the first place.

…and soon, I was going to change gears again, as I picked up the very heady wine of Contemplative Druidry….