Ancient nature consciousness, part 1: Druidism

"The wyrd [fate] of all living things: beauty and then death."
-according to the yew woman in Greywolf's
Interview with a yew tree

I've begun exploring web sites dedicated to Druidism, just one of the ancient religions I intend to study. A nature column might seem an inappropriate place for the discussion of world religions. But in our era it is increasingly difficult to address environmental issues without some meaningful discussion of spirituality.

There is much to be learned from the beliefs and practices of people who lived closer to the Earth and were more directly attuned to its moods and powers. Our lives, our fates and our consciousness are deeply tied to our planet. If it grows sick, we will sicken with it. As Judy Kennedy says in her incisive series, East meets West: toward a global mysticism: "Interfaith work is essential for the sake of planetary survival; we've got to get along."

It would be idealistic to suggest that we could solve the world's problems by returning on a wide scale to any of the ancient religions. Many of their myths, beliefs and practices betray ignorance about scientific facts.

The individual in society

In addition, all early societies placed supreme importance upon social structure and none on the value of the individual. Everyone from god king to the lowliest serf must fulfill his or her duty to this system or face the harshest punishment.

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa relates this to the Inca and other American indigenous cultures in his book of essays, A Writer's Reality (my italics added):

In these cultures, as in the other great civilizations of history foreign to the West, the individual could not morally question the social organism of which he was a part because he only existed as an integral atom of that organism and because for him the dictates of the state could not be separated from morality. the first culture to interrogate and question itself, the first to break up the masses into individual beings who with time gradually gained the right to think and act for themselves, was to become, thanks to that unknown exercise, freedom, the most powerful civilization in our world.

The concept of individual sovereignty may have arisen in Europe, but it was still beyond the understanding of ancient Celtic cultures where Druidism thrived.

A balance of responsibility

It would be difficult to reconcile ourselves with a world view based on what Llosa calls, "the tradition of the antlike societies." Contemporary

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