Lucid Dreams

Short and brief is the candle of life:  Follow your heart.  That phrase pretty much summarizes all Druid philosophy.  But how do you know what your heart is telling you?  Lucid dreams. These dreams are spectacular visions, always in color, accompanied by sound, vividly remembered; that come in series' sequences.  These dreams emphasize both sight and sound together, as seeing and hearing are our principal senses. These are mythic, poetic and teaching dreams. They tell you what you ought to do and they show you how you ought to do it. They are harbingers of the future.


Dreams are visitations.  Dreams ought never to be ignored.  Listen to them.


Analyze them.  Follow them.  Respect them.  For they show forth to light the Way.  Nature has no reason, and certainly Nature has no design; no purpose, whether intelligent or idiotic. Nature does have rhythm and she does have rhyme: Innately poetical.  Musical.  So.  Listen! 

Restrictions on Religion

Under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has an innate right to practice his or her religion and to change his or her religion whenever one wishes, or to practice no religion at all.  In practice, however, fully three-quarters of the world's population live in nations that severely restrict religious expression.  The reason for this is clear:  the State has an established religion and to be a good citizen of the State, one practices the State religion.  In effect, the State itself is the religion. The State expects its residents to sacrifice their individual beliefs for the benefit of the State. Those who don't, or who can't conform, are punished by the State.  These practices are intended to ensure the survival of the State.  One pledges allegiance to the State by the active practice of the State's religion.  Patriotism, in all its obscene flag-waving forms, is a ritual practice.  When a State's religion is in conflict with another State's religion, the result is often war. The Middle East is a prime example of this principle; Iran and Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq, as of right now, in particular.  To outsiders, such as we are as Old Believers, this all appears to be incredibly stupid.  And, in fact, it is!  What people believe in and what they practice is their own concern; but their concerns, if and when dumb, don't deserve others' respect.  Ignorance often can't be avoided because it is so plentiful and wide-spread, but it ought never at all engender our empathy.  Let the fools fight amongst themselves, if it's what they feel compelled to do.  For it's their religions that's exactly what's made them why and what they are: obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics.  We have far better things to do than to interfere in the battles of morons, or to argue with them concerning the morality of their conflicts:  No war can ever be just.  Ignorance can never ever be at peace.  Don't fight with or for fools.

The Faith of Old Europe

For those few who might be interested, The Faith of Old Europe still exists, but it's mainly restricted to the far western fringes of the European Continent and islands off-shore.  Usually it's called "Old Belief" by Christians and Jews and Muslims who also reside in the same areas, followers of the "New Belief." Old Believers are the so-called Pagans. It's a neo-lithic religion that had its flowering in the Copper Age which preceeded the Bronze Age.  Old Europe, though it was a pre-literate civilization, was the first real civilization and was highly sophisticated.  One reason that adhering to the Old Belief has such a prejorative context today is adherents were prohibited from attending school by the schoolmasters, since they were not Christian nor subscribers to one of the other main religions of "People of the Book." Old Believers have no book. 

Beliefs, Behaviors and Genomes

People really are very different and new sub-species of humanity are already in the process of evolving.  What's beneficial for some is harmful for others.  Every physician knows this, and that's why prescriptions for different medications work well for some ethnic groups and have no affect upon others.  Beliefs are similar to drugs as they affect different individuals differently.  For instance, the patristic Abraham belief of the Middle East, which is centered around the Akedah sacrifice as evidence of one's submission to divine will, the prof-erring dedication of the first-born male by its father, would certainly be and clearly is absolutely abhorrent to someone from and of a basically matristic culture of reverence for "The She," such as is in the Druid belief of Old Europe.  Why is this? The explanation is genomic.  Just as musical taste has a very strong genetic component, so does adherence to a particular faith and abhorrence of another.  The Middle Eastern systems of belief were invented by individuals, all of them males from a common pool of Y-chromosome bialelic haplotypes (DNA proof for common male descent); while all the Old Europe Atlantic belief systems were founded by females.  It makes a huge difference as to which faith system and ethical practice is more congenial and having a greater salient benefit to oneself, depending upon whose descendant one might be. Genomes influence beliefs and beliefs influence cultures. Cultures influence behaviors and behaviors cause individual actions.

Rights and Responsibilities

One of the more common questions one gets, when people find out what one's religion really is, is an obvious one regarding ethics: what are the rights and responsibilities men have to each other, how well to treat one another; in short, how best to get along in an increasingly diverse, complex society. So, let's be clear here: no one has the right to be ignorant. I don't. You don't. Yes, many are indeed ignorant, and we are all of us ignorant about many things; but none have any rights to ignorance. No one has an inalienable right to be dumb. Liberty does not encompass stupidity. If someone expresses an ignorant opinion or vehemently adheres to an ignorant belief (usually it's the same person), that opinion and that belief shouldn't be respected. Ever! Because the person expressing the belief is human and therefore quite vulnerable; one ought to be civil and polite to the person, but most certainly that person's opinion and belief don't deserve this same courtesy. People should always be tolerated, yes, even the dumb ones, but stupidity is stupidity after all; so their dumb expressions need never be; and frankly, they ought not to be. The golden rule of treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves is indeed a good one, but it applies only to persons; and not to those persons' opinions. Be discrete, yes, but do disagree. No one need ever have to put up with nonsense, nor should ever be forced to be polite whenever within its presence. Silence fosters the spread of stupidity. Speak up!

The Duty of the Druid

Humanity, which is now but a single species, is splitting into two. This split is both profound and psychic and shall result in much future conflict. Roughly speaking, it will result in two separate sub-species of humanity: the creative and those who can't be creative. Creativity employs a strong psychic element. One has to be able to step outside of space and time. One can do this easily because space and time are constructs. They are illusions. Men made them up. But most people are unable to recognize the fact of the illusion since they've trapped themselves inside it. We who can step outside do have a duty to the others who have an latent ability to step outside. To the rest of humanity, to that vast remainder of humanity, we have no such obligation. The Druid future shall stay with the creative. All those others have their own clerics to assist and to protect them. They lack even the knowledge of our existence. Druids should remain the clerics and counselors for the creative. That's our duty; we serve genius and we serve ourselves alone.

Companions on the Road

Reality has many paths. It doesn't run in a straight line from event to event in a linear sequence. It detours and it turns back onto itself. Some detours run to dead ends. It might seem that the path is heading in the right direction; but it turns out to end abruptly, without warning. The problem isn't so much in avoiding taking detours; everyone takes some during life, but to be able to recognize that one is upon a detour and not the true path early...before the path has run out. One sure way to know one is on a dead-end detour is by noticing who else is on that same path. If people taking the path are people one dislikes and doesn't admire, the path is a dead-ended detour. Companions upon any pathway are sure giveaways as to whether the path is one that is heading in the right direction. If people on any path are ones not deserving of respect; get off the path immediately; turn around; take another way. Choice of companions is the same as the choice for a path; the better take the better paths and the worse take the worse. Take the best.

Energy and Existence

Energy is a big topic. There's a misunderstanding that energy has something to do with strength and it doesn't. This is not to put down strength. It's just that energy is different. Energy comes out of Nothingness, an absolute Void. How to describe this then? Existence is energy: just to be. So when we talk of energy, we are speaking about being; an ability to be in existence. This is an ability, but not a right. No thing has the right to existence but every thing has an ability to exist. What makes a thing, a thing; is this ability, this potential, for existence. Now, one would say: is there not some neutrality; a thing exists simply because it exists? Yes, that's true. A thing does exist because it exists; but it exists because it is contained within a potential for its existence. If it lacked the potential for existence, it wouldn't exist. What gives it this potential? Energy. We can describe energy then as a potential for existence and the ability to continue with its potential so that it doesn't disappear from existence. So, energy has two parts: a potential for existence, and an ability to continue in existence. There's a third part: an ability to cause its own potential. It's this third part that we shall be discussing in future posts: how does one create this potential?

Hollyhocks and Holiness

In the Levant, on the Eastern Mediterranean, it was a tradition amongst the Neanderthals (those who were called ''others" by Atlantic Celts) to bury the most prominent people with hollyhocks and ochre, with flowers and with the same color as those flowers. Few realize today that when they'll attend funerals, they are actually observing a Neanderthal ritual, far older than humanity. But only the prominent were so buried. One of the more pernicious myths that humanity has are the false concepts of equality and democracy. By nature, men are naturally aristocratic, continuing in a very long hominid tradition. Better men have always been treated in better ways, even in and by their burials. The problem is: what constitutes the better? Hominid tradition (humans are only a couple of hundred thousand years old after all) is that; what constitutes the better is holiness. That's it. The idea that men are equal is absurd. They are not. They never have been. They never shall be. The idea that men are created is absurd. They are not. They are born of their mothers who were impregnated by their fathers, even if it's a test tube that's their womb. Now men do create their character, and it's how men are honored and it's how men ought to be honored; that is, by their character alone: such is real equality and democracy.

The Origin of Sin

The two main psychic diseases are schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder and both are immune response diseases triggered by the hormonal environmental changes taking place in adolescence. Both diseases are chemical ones caused by genetic triggers responding to the person's internal environment. Both of the diseases are directly related and both fall on the same spectrum of cognitive malfunction. All the founders of religions suffered from these diseases to some extant, and in the case of the Abrahamic religions; they suffered profoundly. These psychic diseases cause an inability to differentiate between the external and the internal. External events that are not even remotely connected with the perceiver of the events, are attributable to actions either taken or not taken, by the perceiver of the events. This then is the origin of the concept of sin: false attribution between internal and external caused by a genetic chemical imbalance that results in the profound psychic malfunction of perception...sin doesn't exist but bad people do. The actions of any person, whether they be good or bad, stem from the person's character and every person is solely responsible for creating their own character.

Sacred Texts and Interpretation

One of the problems with the Abrahamic faiths is who has been given the right of interpretation of the sacred texts of those religions. Most religious systems have such texts (the Old Belief doesn't). Usually, the interpretation of texts is left to clerics, those who have accreditation by their faith's educational system in interpreting the faith's texts. The texts themselves were defined as being sacred because they are considered divinely inspired and dictated by divine emmissaries, angels and prophets and deities. When one reads the texts, they seem nonsensical and contradictory; and that's because they actually are. However, if the texts are read instead in an allegorical manner and are interpreted as allegories, some parts of the texts do make some sense. We know there are no such entities as gods or angels; but there were men who wrote the texts and men who are interpreting them, and sometimes those men actually know what they're speaking of; not often, true, but sometimes. Interpretation is reflective of the person who does the interpretation. A good person interprets wisely in a life affirming manner, and a bad person shall interpret the texts as mandating violence and conflict. Texts themselves can't change, as they are fixed; but interpretations could change radically, depending upon who is interpreting.

Science and Religion

Science is about obtaining a more accurate description of reality, while religion is about actually living in reality; so the two can't contradict each other. Science isn't a religion, as description is not existence. One should help the other. A religious person would make for a better scientist and the more science one knows, the more religious one should be. Any religion that rejects the findings of science is simply a bad religion and any scientist that rejects religion is a bad scientist. Of course, the findings of science can be wrong---anything that can't be subjected to empirical review is not science; it's simply opinion, and a scientist's opinion is only that: an opinion and not anything more. Religions can be judged by their veracity: a religion that mandates and demands unquestioned obedience from its adherents is obviously false, as it means the religion is afraid of the truth, and being afraid of the truth means only one thing: that it, itself, has to be untruthful.

Real Religion

Religions are created by men for men. The purpose of religion is mainly a conservative one: to preserve the professed values of a particular culture through the mechanism of both a belief and practice system. Sometimes those values are actually worth preserving: compassion, charity and civility, for instance. The world certainly needs more of those three. But some values don't deserve preservation, like submission and subservience to authority. Real religion, as opposed to the fake faux kind, deals with transcendent transformation, going from one state of existence to a far better state, through the daily practicing of an intense spiritual discipline. The disciplines differ in different religions, but this same goal is desired to be attained: transformation. If the religion is a real religion, one ought not to be at all that same dull dumb person as one was before one entered upon practice of the religion's spiritual discipline. One changes. If there's no change, seek out another discipline, as the test of religion's virtue is in its ability to transform adherents.

Origin of Religion

Religions originate through the actions of inspired schizophrenics. Some person, always acting as an outsider to his or her tribe because of some difference, physical and psychological, conceives himself or herself as a transmitter of some transcending truth and tries to convey that truth to the tribe. Because the tribe knows the person and that the person is peculiar, the tribe rejects the person and his or her truth. In most cases, because the person is truly insane, that's the end of the story. However, some persons, because they are so charismatic, are able to convince some other tribe, not as familiar with the strange peculiarity of the person, to buy into his or her truth. All religions start this same way with one inspired person. The question then is: what makes for inspiration? The answer is: that person's peculiarity. Not being accepted by the tribe causes the person to seek for approbation from within their own psyche, rather than from approval by the tribe (which wasn't forthcoming anyway).

Myths and Origins: The Red and the White

In my latest work, I included a short poem: The Dream of Crom, which is a Druid cosmology. I thought it might be of interest for all those who may be unfamiliar with our traditions. I'm now working on a rather long poem: The Red and the White, which describes the origins of man from the Druid perspective. Of course, this is only our mythology and it's not at all intended as a scientific treatise; any more, for instance, than the cosmology is, but I think it is instructive of a certain way of thinking. It's how we've long perceived how origins came about, and it includes a famous love story from my family's history. Luckily, I'm a good poet; so its verse isn't as insipid as most contemporary poetry. All Druids think and dream in poetry. It's just how we're made.

Psychic Power and the Trap of Time

If we look at time, not as a sequence of events, but as separate distinct moments, all of which are existing simultaneously, like pixels in a picture on a smart-phone that could be rotated this way and that with swipes of a finger; we can approximate how time is maneuvered and manipulated. The mind is that finger. The thing is this: the mind can be moved. The mind is not imprisoned within the skull, but centered in it. The mind can extend outside the skull. There are methods of meditation to allow for this extension to take place. Every culture has such methods, and has developed formal training disciplines to accomplish extension of the mind outside the head. Just as you can access blogs on a web, provided you know their respective addresses, these isolated moments in time can be accessed if you can locate their respective locations. Even further, just as you can rotate the picture on the smart-phone, all those isolated moments in time can also be rotated, changed and modified from their separated locations. They can be moved, just as your mind can be moved. This does not mean they can be deleted. They cannot be extinguished, but they could be edited so each moment is placed into a different sequence. They can be positioned differently so that the sequence of events is no longer linear. They'll become part of a hologram.

Pragmatic Idealism

It's common to preface any observation of strange behavior or hearing of a statement of belief with a brief comment: whatever works, works, and I usually do so myself to avoid controversy. One does so for several reasons, the chief of which is this: Never argue with ignorance. The fact is that many people, when discussing some topic that doesn't directly affect how they make their living, hold completely inane opinions about almost everything. But if one were to attempt to try to correct their arguments with facts, they will be offended and would become even more adamant in their absurd opinions---one has accomplished absolutely nothing by arguing. So, don't. Consider their complete statements and arguments in silence and nod your head and give some non-committal reply to their arguments. After all, it just might be that one's own facts and assumptions were incorrect. And it never is worth the losing of a friend over some little foolish disagreement. When dealing with strangers, it's quite different. Although all have the absolute right to express opinions in public; none have an absolute right to be heard, nor do they possess a right in any fashion to a response to what they say. So those fools then can simply be ignored.

Thinking with the Third Eye

One thing that all Druids have is a lot of ideas, answers and solutions; not all of which make much sense but we do have a lot. It sort of sets us apart from others (that and our psychic ability---we actually see, feel, smell, taste and hear the lines of energy in the universe). So, how do we do it? Easy! It has to deal with triple vision. The eyes are binocular and are designed to focus at some point in the distance, probably a tree limb, from which we swung when we were hominids. The way to get lots of ideas (the quality of any idea is dependent upon the character of its creator), is to focus the sight of the two eyes in such a way that vision is no longer binocular---one eye looks at the inside of the head while the other looks at the outside of the head, and to vary which eye is doing the inward focus and which does the outward focus. This process of looking inwards, and of also looking outwards, simultaneously, is what makes the "third eye" in the center of a forehead. From a purely neurological perspective, what the brain does is shift from alpha wave production which accompanies binocular focused vision to a gamma wave production, of out-of-focus vision. It's an old trick known to every meditative man. Once gamma wave production begins, that will accompany an inner vision, ideas flow very easily. Whether ideas are good ones depends on who has them. This has to deal with character. Character comes from heredity: Have good parents!

Relativity and Creativity

Creativity is misunderstood because the creative rarely speak about it as they are far too busy actually doing than conversing. The non-creative often speak about persistence and fortitude, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with creativity itself; rather these both have to do with success. The successful have persistence and fortitude; the creative have inspiration. Now, how does this inspiration come about---by an ability to see relationships in dichotomies. The merely talented expect reality to be logical and reasonable. It never is and it can never be so. Reality is reality. There are no laws, either natural or otherwise. They're descriptions only and the more accurate of these descriptions can be termed as science, because they're far more probable and possible; but there shall always be exceptions even to the most accurate of descriptions. Science is not science because it is true. What makes science something that can be relied upon in most instances is that it has descriptive consistency. The creative are able to perceive relationships in differences. Something contradicts something else. Rather than discarding one alternative for the other, a creative person accepts a contradiction and finds within contradiction: relationship.

Martial and Mental Training

Martial Training has always been an integral part of mental training and encouraging psychic abilities. Although few have true psychic ability (most claimants to ability are either delusional and schizophrenic or simply outright frauds), everyone has a mind and it can be trained. Public educational systems are designed to benefit the state by inculcating its citizenship values, and so have very little to do with actually training the child's mind. This is why the affluent will pay for their children to go to private institutions and not to public ones. All private schools place a great deal of attention upon physical education as an an elite is superior to others not just because they may have social skills and intellectual skills others might not possess but because physically they are superior. The affluent live longer and are healthier than the poor. This is no accident. In all countries, the elites received martial training from a very early age in boxing, wrestling and the usage of the sword. Boxing, wrestling and sword-play require immense mental skills, as well as immense physical skill. Unfortunately, the common view of martial training has been corrupted from viewing films and mixed-martial-arts events. All of these have very little to do with actual martial training. There's no such thing as submission or tapping-out in real combat; there's just death and maiming. Martial training deals with the preservation of the warrior's life in combat.