This article is part two of a new series, in which we examine Pagan and Heathen ethical codes. While the Wiccan Rede is arguably the best known Pagan ethical code, it is not the only one followed. We’ll look at a particular code and then explore a specific example of striving to live by that code. Part one, the Ten Precepts of Solon, can be found here.
Modern Druids may not have a specific written ethical code, such as the Rede or the 10 Commandments, but they do have a ethics that guide their lives and their actions. The Wild Hunt spoke with two Druids, one from Canada and one from the UK, about what living an ethical Druidic life looks like.
Brendan Myers [Courtesy Photo]
When asked what ethical code Druids follow, Dr. Myers said, “I’d characterise Druidic ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, that is, a model of ethics where what matters most is the embodiment of a certain character; the lore certainly offers rules and laws to follow but this is much less important than becoming a certain kind of person. Druidic moral character prizes knowledge and philosophy, ecological awareness, as well as a warrior-hero model of honour.”
He said a favorite example of this is a proverb called Oisin’s Answer, “When the Irish Pagan warrior-hero Oisin, son of Fionn MacCumhall, was asked by St. Patrick what sustained him and his people before the coming of Christianity, Oisin said ‘The truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms, and the fulfillment of our [oaths].’ ”
Myers said that he follows an idiosyncratic spiritual-humanist philosophy, inspired by Druidic thought but also by various 20th century philosophers, “The idea is that human life is always circumscribed by inevitable, unavoidable, and quasi-mythic events: birth and death, growing up and growing old, loneliness and solitude, our social relations, our embodied requirements for food and air, and so on. I call these events ‘the immensities.’ The encounter with the immensity often at first appears to be freedom-constraining, or life-obstructing. Yet the immensity also demands from each person a response. The excellent response involves humanity, integrity, and wonder: these clusters of virtue transform the encounter with the immensity from a situation of fear and frustration, into a situation of life-affirmation and meaning. The unexcellent response, the response lacking in those virtues, leads to more fear, more despair, more frustration, more social injustice.”
Myers added that his choice of career is part of how he lives out the ethical code of a modern Druid, “I suppose that as a writer and a college professor, I pursued a career that’s as close as one can come to the kind of career the ancient Druids had. Like them, I am a professional knowledge-worker, and an advocate for social justice. I’ve favoured causes that seemed to me both important and also summoned by the call of the immensity: environmental protection, feminism, labour and working class activism. Although it isn’t “Druidic,” in my private view I’m also a fan of the Charge of the Goddess and its prescription for a meaningful life: “dance, feast, sing, make music and love.” It’s hard to imagine how a life could be meaningful without them. But there’s no such thing as a cultural purist, and there never has been; I also learn from the Upansiads, and the Tao Te Ching, and the Stoics, and all the people I’ve met in every country I’ve ever visited.”
Joanna van der Hoeven [Courtesy Photo]
Ms. van der Hoeven said that within Druidry, there is no one ethical code that all Druids should follow. “Dogma is antithetical to Druidry, as it is a religion, spirituality or philosophy that follows nature. As nature is constantly changing, the Druid seeks to find an honourable relationship with the world around her in order work and live better in the world, in harmony with the environment, changing and adapting; always learning. In my work at Druid College UK, we teach a deep reverence for the natural world, and allow that reverence to let us live our lives to the fullest in harmony. We investigate deeply every aspect of our lives, looking at our consumerism, our local environment, what we can do to live in peace with the world and more. When we have a real understanding that we are a part of an ecosystem, we broaden our view from the singular to the plural, and our perspective encompasses the whole.”
In talking about how she tries to live a life in an honorable relationship with the world, van der Hoeven said, “Examples of living this ethic in my own life include buying organic and local food as much as possible, growing some of my own food, having a wildlife-friendly garden, taking daily walks to connect with and learn from the land, having solar panels on my roof, using as little electricity and petrol as possible, donating to charity, regular litter-picks, learning about permaculture; the list goes on.
“It is about understanding that there is no separation, that we are a part of a whole, connected to everything around us. We are dependent upon everything else, working together to create life as we know it. It is the relationships that we have with everything around us, whether it is the blackbird or the deer, a work colleague, politicians, honey bee or mountain.”
![[Twitter/Druid College UK]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Q0A6OUZt1.jpeg)
[Twitter/Druid College UK]
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Over the next year, Cara Schulz will continue to explore the many different ethical codes present in modern Pagan, Heathen and Polytheist practices. With help from others, she will highlight the codes themselves, their history and how they manifest in people’s daily lives.
Part Three Coming Soon …
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There are other ways to be a professional Druid besides being a “knowledge worker” too.
I work at a nonprofit that fights logging companies and changes laws to protect the ancient forests of California. I read people eco “poet-tree” over the phone, and they love my the informative, enchanting words so much that they contribute generously to save the trees!
I like everything I’ve read here. My personal alignment and ethics is to be a poet-warrior, we need to fight to protect the trees, and rally our friends and allies to the legal and political battlefield to push back the blighting industry and lying tongues that promote it. Our planet will die, and we with it, if we don’t fight back against the onslaught of chainsaws, smoke stacks, waste-pools, and cement trucks…
It costs a lot of privilege to say that one lives their ethics through solar panels, wildlife gardens, permaculture, and professionally teaching. Is there anything actionable in the ethics discussed that anyone can do?
The choices they make – through solar panels, professional teaching etc. are not the only ways, nor necessarily even the most noble ways to live one’s ethics. The actions of installing solar panels or cultivating a wildlife garden are just the end points of the ethical reasoning process. The source of it is the decision to strive toward embodiment of character and the “excellent response” to life’s great challenges.
The moment a person decides to order their life around such virtues, everything becomes actionable. The virtuous actions of the less privileged or even destitute are no less meaningful than those of college professors or professional philosophers. In the aggregate, the lived ethical actions of the ordinary folk are more important in shaping the nature of the society because there are far more of them than there are intellectuals.
Asmuch as this series is interesting and needed, I can’t help but predict the
take home message is going to be that there isn’t a Druid/Heathen/Wiccan
ethics, more that there are as many ethical systems as there are Druids/Heathens/Wiccans etc.
The only thing we share in common is that we’re all generally figuring this out on our own and will come up with our own system of ethics whatever that may be. Using historical and literary sources is grand, but whilst it is on one hand the best way to get into the mind of the religious systems of the past we are connecting to, it is also the case that being of the past they are not necessarily of any relevance or use today (the bible being a case in point if you like).
Now, what would be really interesting would be to have some ethical discussions on Wild hunt; open a question, have a spread of opinions from whomever and leave the discussion open for a lot longer to allow the communities to talk, discus and offer their ethical basis.
It helps to remember that the Irish laws also included a class structure that valued some (many) people less than others. Slaves and the working poor had literally less value than someone with money. Sadly some things have not changed in over a thousand years. “Equal under the law” has lost vs. the “Affluenza Defense”.
That’s going to be a very tough nut to crack. From perhaps World War II to the late 1970s, we took some honest stabs at the problem. Since that time, our society has pretty much dropped all pretense of equality or even a baseline of dignity for the poor. It’s straight-up Social Darwinism. Most places in the world at least aspire to raise the standards of living for the poor, if only to maintain order. Our nation, and certainly modern conservatism, aspires to make America a Third World nation in the old sense of the word – a few hundred families who own essentially all the wealth, a thin layer of professionals and security industry to protect them, and the other 98% of the people as utterly disposable slaves or serfs.
The Pagan community has not rid itself of classism by any means, BUT…I take some hope in the fact that we tend not to buy into Social Darwinism and the obsession with material wealth. Broadly speaking, we share some common ideals of interconnection, sustainability, a deep respect of knowledge and philosophy, and conscious living. Our movement, and those which share common root stock with us, have made some truly transformative changes in just two generation’s time. The emerging global consensus on environmentalism came from us. The Pope is striving to sound Pagan on this issue! It’s just possible we might pull off something similar with social justice issues.
Its a shame that none of the reconstructive path Druids were included (or possibly answered) in this 🙂