OBOD – Philip Carr-Gomm

Tasting Druidry

January 15th, 2011

Last year we asked ourselves the question: Would it be possible to capture on film some of the magic that we experience as members of a Druid group? I wasn’t sure we could do it, but an old friend and film-maker, Kevin Redpath, came along to our summer solstice celebration in Glastonbury and then to our Lughnasadh camp near the White Horse in July, and he has created an 8 minute film that I think really does capture the essence of what we are about. Have a look and see what you think! A big thank you to Kevin and all those who participated in the film – it makes me feel so proud to be associated with such fantastic people! We’ll be putting up a Vimeo version of this on www.druidry.org soon, meanwhile here’s the Youtube version:

A Poem for the Solstice

December 21st, 2007

Being involved with the Order of Bards Ovates & Druids means we are in touch with a host of very gifted people all over the world – and in particular poets. Every poem Sarah Fuhro from Boston writes inspires me. She just sent this one for the Solstice tonight:

Row the Boat

When you row a boat,
a rowboat, a dory,
you row backwards,
and, so you must,
in this contrary style,
keep observing,
over your shoulder,
where you’re going.

And let’s say,
you want to get
you, and your boat
out to the lighthouse.

The lighthouse
pulls you home,
calls you home.

Well, you must,
face away from home.
in order to get there,
with your oars
swinging around,
your neck stiff
and the sweet light
of the battered moon rise
to the front of you.

Old Moon’s in concert with
the revolving eye
of the light house tower,
which lies behind you,
but is the future.

Now focus on the Moon
as you row strong away.
So long, Moon Lady,
send me to the beacon,
send me home again.

Sarah Fuhro

Lewes is a Magical Town

November 24th, 2007

In my annual review for OBOD I talked about how this time last year the leader of Lewes District Council phoned me and invited us to watch the Winter solstice dawn with members of the local council, and then to have breakfast with them all. I was so surprised I asked her a little more and she told me she was a Wiccan and wanted to educate others in the council about the pre-Christian heritage of Lewes. I googled her name – Marina Baker – and found her in Wikipedia. She’s had a very interesting life! Lewes has the HQ of the world’s largest Druid Order, the council leader was (last year) an ex-Playboy model and a witch, and our Mayor is called Merlin Milner. And now something else…. we have probably the first and only ritual shop in Britain. This is not a shop selling crystals and books but a shop offering to create rituals for you – for birthdays, marriages, funerals, farewells, retirements and so on. We’ve heard they create very magical events – they’re called Light on Life and you can see their website here.

Lewes is also a Transition Town – working to reduce its carbon footprint.

PS Things are moving fast – last year we got that invitation. This year we had another invitation (along with thousands of other people) to participate in a synchronised outpouring of energy at this year’s solstice to help alter the earth’s collective atmosphere in the direction of peace. Rather like the idea of getting everyone in China to jump up and down at the same time to see if we can shift the earth’s axis, this suggests that if enough people have an orgasm at the same time we will affect the earth’s ‘energy’ for good. Although it sounds nutty, if you connect it with Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance concept it starts to make a little more sense. What is interesting is that the people organising it are relating it to Princeton University’s random number generator investigations that mysteriously seem to suggest that changes in global consciousness register on these machines. I had pasted in an interview with the couple who came up with the idea, but I couldn’t turn the sound off, so I’ve removed it. It was an interesting discussion and you can see it and other material on their website. Instead I’ll paste in a clip whose sound you can control. It’s the ‘sound-byte’ version but conveys the basic idea.

Update29.12.07: Results not statistically significant, but worth looking at, along with results of other world events.