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" The songs of our ancestors

are also the songs of our children "

The Druid Way

Tea with a Druid – Tea with Druids!

September 7th, 2021

Hello again! After a 6 week break a new series of Tea with a Druid/Tea with Druids is back, and here are some notes and links to topics mentioned:

Thanks to Matthew Kniseley for the great new intro film. His site is here.
Thanks to Charlie Roscoe for the music that accompanies this film, from the track Blessed Water in the Album Druid Circle. You can also hear this music in the meditation collection Sacred Nature.

The film I mention of the Chauvet cave paintings is The Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog.

The Hove amber cup  that I mention, and depicted left, dates from the Bronze Age. The blog I refer to can be found here.

Frank Owen’s books that I mention are: The Mist-Filled Path and The Spiral of Memory and Belonging, and then his more recent poetry collections are The Temple of Warm Harmony and The School of Soft Attention. All are easily discoverable online. Franks’s website is here.

This morning, Frank sent me a poem he has written, inspired by the Tea with Druids session last night. My apologies that the AI in this WordPress blog removes the formatting – in the original the poem ‘breathes’ with spaces between sections.
“Druid Spirit”
“Nature + Poetry = Peace”
–Philip Carr-Gomm
We can’t go back.
While it does help the soul
to think of our ancestors
feeling these same leanings,
we can’t go back.
We can make note
of their tracks.
We can memorize their names.
We can allow
our Traveling-Spirit
to drift into their stories
while sitting beside
a crackling hearth.
But, we can’t go back.
We can only drink deep
from our own
cauldron of longing —
resting in the sense
that our longing,
here and now,
is part of some
abiding, ancient flow
that connects us.
But, we can’t go back.
Have you ever hovered
at the forest’s edge
before stepping in;
that place
where the modern frenzy
drops away
and the healing green powers
start to embrace you?
Next time you find yourself
standing at such a threshold,
pause.
Breathe.
Open yourself
to the tradition
yet-to-be-formed
by your own spinning cells.
(c) 2021 / Frank Inzan Owen (Hidden Mountain) / http://withkoji.com/@hiddenmountain

7 Responses to “Tea with a Druid – Tea with Druids!”

  1. Philip, so good to have Tea With Druids back again. Loving the new intro!!! The poem that you read is lovely and I will be purchasing a copy of the book. I am currently reading your book, The Druid’s Way. I’m quite early in my Bardic studies so am reading all I can to learn the path. Thank you for Tea, looking forward to next Monday.

  2. It’s great to have you back. The new intro is amazing. In an interesting synchronicity, I just happen to be reading, The Druid Way, AND I just started The Songs of Our Ancestors are Also the Songs of Our Children chapter (and I think it’s awesome how you wrote that on the cover in Ogham script). Thank you for all that you do for the Druid community.

  3. Truly an honor to be included in the flow, brother Philip. Deep Peace of Mountain Shade and Valley Brightness Be Yours. /|\

  4. Hi there, from a green valley in New Zealand.
    I just found your website today, after weeks of searching for references. Why am I interested?
    Long story. In 1966 when I was 20, and trying to sort myself out, a past life as a druid came roaring up out of the psychological woodwork and I had ancient poetry resounding in my ears. I wasn’t delusional- I went on with daily life as per normal, just slightly puzzled. (I wish now I had written it down…)
    I am someone who has seen other past lives and parallel worlds, and had numerous spiritual experiences all this life. In about 2007 I found a shortcut to God and went up into the highest states of consciousness. But I like to double-check these things, so I was reading everything I could in order to understand it all. And I have kept journals of all my experiences. A book on parallel worlds is in preparation.
    My next project is a book on the druid life, which I have seen bits of all this life. Having visited the high states I do realise that all time is Now, and I am probably getting bleed-throughs from ‘then’, but we have to use words that convey the inexplicable, and it’s easier to talk about past lives than fuss over semantics.
    What I have been doing is focusing on parts of that life and writing down what I see. But I do like to double check what I get, which is why I’m also doing research as I go. It’s spiritual autobiography, not fiction, in my mind at least. I feel that much of this life has been grounded in the skills I learned as a druid. One example: as a child I loved poetry, and poems have often leaped into my awareness fully formed. Or another: my family used herbal medicines and I taught myself homeopathy and have healed people of all sorts of unusual problems that doctors couldn’t fix.
    So good to find your website. And your books.
    Regards,
    Lesley Sales

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