Penny Billington - The Path of Druidry: Walking the Ancient Green Way

Penny Billington is a Druid and celebrant in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and has edited the Order magazine, Touchstone, for more than ten years. She regularly runs workshops, organizes rituals, and gives lectures. She is also the author of two Druidic mystery novels. She resides in Somerset, England. Visit her online at www.pennybillington.co.uk.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

The Path of Druidry: Walking the Ancient Green Way 2011 by Penny Billington.

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First e-book edition 2011

E-book ISBN: 9780738729848

Book design by Steffani Sawyer

Celtic ornament on cover and interior Dover Publications, Inc., Celtic Designs CD-Rom and Book

Cover art 2011 age fotostock/SuperStock

Cover design by Ellen Lawson

Edited by Lunaea Weatherstone

Interior illustrations Chris Down

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1: The Basics of Druidry

2: In, Out, and Round About: Your Feet on the Track

3: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: The Web of Correspondence

4: The Cycle of the Seasons

5: Water and the Moon: The Edges of Territory

6: Co-habitees of the Natural World: Teachers and Totems

7: The Celts: Core Connections and Associations

8: Stones and Stars: Our Maps

9: Taking Centre Stage: The Bard

10: Magic in the Forest: The Ovate Path

11: Engaging with the Community: The Druid

12: Druidry in the World

When you pick up a book that offers help in following a spiritual path, you need to be careful. Who is offering to be your guide and where are they planning to lead you?

One of my earliest memories of the author of this book arose in a field near the great and ancient figure of the White Horse of Uffington. At the time, she was dressed as a blackbird. On her feet she was wearing a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. On her head she wore a mask crafted by Will Worthington, illustrator of the Druid Animal Oracle. She was helping to act out one of the old myths for a camp of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. That evening I saw her in another guiseas Carmina Piranha, playing the washboard alongside her blues-singing husband, ZZ Birmingham, and her fiddle-playing daughter, Weil Influenz. There was something about the bravura with which she whisked her gloved hands over the washboard that told me I was in the presence of a Druid who was blessed with the creative fire of Awen.

Druidry is a spiritual path rooted in a love of trees and the land, of tradition and the old stories, but it is not a spirituality that advocates a passive and merely mystical appreciation of these things. Instead it is a way of being in the world, of living ones life, that is hands-on, that is actively magical without denying the need for times of mystical union. When I saw Penny later, as a gifted ritualist under a harvest moon, I saw someone who had realized this completely and was ready to step into costume, make music, and do magic at the drop of a hat.

Druidry, though, is a way of knowledge as well as of action, and the most prominent Druids of the last few hundred years have been those who have combined artistry and eccentricity with a love of scholarship and research. As I got to know Penny, I discovered that she too was driven by this love, and that she was steeped in a knowledge of the Western mystery tradition, and in particular in the work of one of Englands finest magicians: Dion Fortune.

Dion Fortune was trained in the magic of the Golden Dawn and in psychoanalysis, and her knowledge of the Qabalah, and of the polarity magic now familiar to most Wiccans, was second to none. One of her greatest contributions was to develop the idea of three rays: nature magic, hermetic knowledge, and compassion or Christ-consciousness. These match the three paths that lead from the Tree of Lifes sephiroth of Netzach, Hod, and Tiphareth. In a stroke of genius, undoubtedly encouraged by modern Druidrys frequent use of the symbol of three rays of light, Penny has taken this idea and applied it powerfully to the study of Druidism.

In doing so, this book becomes more than just another attempt to present the basic ideas of Druidry, and it takes its place alongside those works that have actively contributed to the articulation and development of the tradition. Druidism has never been a closed system that appeared in the world at a given time and is now preserved in dusty libraries. Like a great river fed by many streams, it began to take shape amongst the inhabitants of the western shores of Europe thousands of years ago, and is best known as a form of Celtic spirituality noted by classical authors such as Julius Caesar. But over the centuries it has been informed and shaped by many other sources so that todayover three hundred and fifty years after the Druid Revival began in England in the mid-seventeenth centuryit represents a vibrant and growing source of inspiration for those disenchanted with the mainstream religions, who are seeking instead a spiritual way rooted in a love of nature and the Old Ways.

You are in good hands if you choose to follow the advice given in this book. Penny has graduated from the training programme of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, she has been the editor of our magazine Touchstone for over a decade, she has taught workshops and has helped to organise Druid groups, camps, and rituals. She knows the way, and she knows it well enough to understand that, like the Holy Grail or the Cauldron of Plenty, which offer untold bounties, Druidry offers a multitude of ways to explore the landscape of the soul. In offering a course within these pages, structured around the idea of the three rays, she has succeeded in creating a work that will benefit not only the reader who is approaching Druidry for the first time, but also old hands who have already taken other courses, or have steeped themselves in Druid lore for decades.