Nimue Brown

Circle Network Book Review: Druidry and Meditation

By Nimue Brown Published by Moon Books Paperback £11.99 172 pages

Nimue Brown is a Druid celebrant, a Pagan Federation volunteer and has completed her OBOD (Order of the Bards, Ovates and Druids) training. She has been involved with the Druid Network and is a founder member of the West Midlands’ Druid Gorsedd, Bards of the Lost Forest, has run a closed ritual group, a folk club and is an experienced workshop facilitator and meditation teacher. She facilitates meditation groups within the UK Druidry community and has written this insightful and stimulating book on the use of Western style meditation for group and individual Druid practise. She includes passive and active exercises to deepen experience and awareness, and provides philosophy to aid personal and spiritual development and an understanding of the sacred.

Druidry involves meditation and this is the best book on the interweaving of these two powerful disciplines but anyone interested in meditation would benefit, as would anyone on an earth-based path. The elements are covered and an understanding of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions. The author also introduces the subject of how to contact spirits through drumming, pathworking, breathing, relaxation, chanting, honouring the ancestors and appreciating the spirit of place. The importance of creativity is included.

Also by Nimue Brown is the paperback ‘Druidry and the Ancestors – Finding our place in our own history’, a poetry collection ‘Lost Bards and Dreamers’ under the name Brynneth Nimue, and written with her partner, Tom Brown, the first part of a webcomic, ‘Hopeless Maine – Personal Demons’.

Nimue says: "Druidry is a broad and complex path, and explaining my place in it is tricky. I’m inspired by the ancient Celts, but not seeking to reconstruct. I’m interested in group work, but not currently working with a group. I’m drawn to the Bard tradition, and have studied with OBOD. I also review books for The Druid Network. For the last two years I’ve walked quite a solitary path of deep communion with the natural world, but at some point I will be working in more human centred spaces again. I’m interested, like most spiritual people, in ways of enriching life and healing old wounds. I think a lot about how we can live in more environmentally and emotionally sustainable ways and feel certain that the two go together. However, I also feel very strongly that spirituality should not be about one person alone, seeking individual enlightenment. It may seem easier that way, but my world view has in it the idea that we are all fragments of the whole, all sparks of spirit and all moving together. One person alone cannot break away from that to become more in isolation. What we do together, with each other, for each other, through each other – that has to be part of the journey too. In this I’m not just thinking about human relationships either, but how we engage with everything, and all the ways in which spirit can manifest to us, and interact with us. 'Druidry and Meditation' is not just about deep inner practice, it’s about reaching out. Meditation should not take us away from the world into some rarefied state of nonbeing, it should take us deeper into engagement with all that is around us. This is the specific blending of a Druidic perspective with the practice of meditation, rooted in the idea that relationship is central, and that escape is not the aim or the answer. I’m generally interested in making spiritual work accessible, not talking about spirit in fluffy or overly mystical ways that serves to exclude people or make them feel inadequate. I want to support people in engaging with the world in a spiritual way. I blog regularly at www.druidlife.wordpress.com and am always open to questions and suggestions there. My second book, 'Druidry and the Ancestors' is in the pipeline, and I’m currently working on a third. There are a lot of introductory books out there, but not so much for someone a little further into the Druidic forest, so I’m hoping to keep writing ‘Druidry and’ titles, to rectify that a bit!" Book Reviewer: Kim Allensby.