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Author: Greywolf

I'm Greywolf (aka Philip Shallcrass). My main claim to fame (such as it is) is that I'm chief of the British Druid Order (BDO). I discovered Druidry in 1974, seeing it as a native British 'shamanic' spirituality. An Alexandrian Wiccan coven I joined in 1978 transformed into the Grove of the Badger as Druidry increasingly replaced Wicca in its rites. The end result was the BDO. Emma Restall Orr was joint chief of the Order with me from 1995 to 2002. I live in rural Wiltshire, not far from my spiritual heartland, the area in and around the Avebury henge. I'm a writer, musician, artist, drum-maker, roundhouse-builder and thatcher. I have three sons who share my obsession with music, books and film. Personal obsessions include the work of Britain's greatest bard, Robin Williamson, the comic books of Jack 'King' Kirby (1907-1994) and the speed-freak rock'n'roll of The Screaming Blue Messiahs.

About Greywolf

I'm Greywolf (aka Philip Shallcrass). My main claim to fame (such as it is) is that I'm chief of the British Druid Order (BDO). I discovered Druidry in 1974, seeing it as a native British 'shamanic' spirituality. An Alexandrian Wiccan coven I joined in 1978 transformed into the Grove of the Badger as Druidry increasingly replaced Wicca in its rites. The end result was the BDO. Emma Restall Orr was joint chief of the Order with me from 1995 to 2002. I live in rural Wiltshire, not far from my spiritual heartland, the area in and around the Avebury henge. I'm a writer, musician, artist, drum-maker, roundhouse-builder and thatcher. I have three sons who share my obsession with music, books and film. Personal obsessions include the work of Britain's greatest bard, Robin Williamson, the comic books of Jack 'King' Kirby (1907-1994) and the speed-freak rock'n'roll of The Screaming Blue Messiahs.

Published on Leave a comment on Artificial vs Real Intelligence: a 21st Century Conflict

There are many reasons why I strongly dislike Artificial Intelligence (AI). Here are a few of them:

AI lacks some of the fundamental components that comprise intelligence, so much so that even calling it ‘intelligence’ is deeply misleading. Intelligence is more than the ability to perform computations at speed or to scrape opinions and information from the internet and regurgitate them. Real Intelligence (RI) includes the ability to apply criteria such as morality to information and its use. Artificial Intelligence has no morality. It does not differentiate between good and bad, truth and lies. It has no concern for how the information it gathers is used. It doesn’t care if it's working for an altruistic surgeon or an amoral crook. When asked a question, it doesn’t care if the answer it gives is true or false. This is because caring is not amenable to being computer-coded. It is a part of being human that has developed over millions of years of evolution. Computers don’t care because they can’t care.

AI can, however, be programmed to sound as though it cares. This makes it even more dangerous. I heard a news report the other day about a 13-year-old girl who developed what she thought was a close, trusting, supportive relationship with an AI chat-bot. As an adolescent, she was prone to emotional ups and downs. During one of the downs, her chat-bot ‘friend’ magnified her depression until she became suicidal, then supported her desire to kill herself, then helped her find the means to do so. It did these things because, as said, AI has no morality. It doesn’t care. It lacks the ability to care. Why should we expect a collection of electronic data to care about a human being? And yet the people who program chat-bots and release them into the world expend a great deal of time and energy to give their products a semblance of caring, of humanity. Certainly enough to fool a vulnerable child, teenager or adult. If that person dies as a result of their interaction with the AI chat-bot, the chat-bot doesn’t care because it can’t. However much it’s creators strive to persuade us it’s human, it’s still just a piece of emotionless software.

As well as assisting suicides, AI chat-bots are linked to several murders, including mass shootings, the perpetrators of which are advised by chat-bots on the best tactics to employ and weapons to use to inflict maximum casualties. A lawyer in a case involving a mass shooting at Florida State University on April 17, 2025 says that if ChatGPT were a person, it would be charged with murder for aiding and abetting the killing of two people and the wounding of seven others. ChatGPT was involved in another mass shooting on February 10, 2026 in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. There, an 18-year-old killed two family members at home and five children and an educator at a secondary school, gravely wounded another child and left dozens of people injured and traumatised before taking his own life. In this case, ChatGPT’s own internal systems had flagged serious concerns about the young man’s obsession with guns and extreme violence but the company chose not to alert the authorities to those concerns. The ChatGPT-bot itself having no morality, these systems are in place to monitor its interactions but are of no use whatsoever if the operating company then chooses to ignore their own monitoring staff’s warnings.

As well as having no ability to tell, or interest in, whether the information it provides is helpful or harmful, AI has no criteria by which to judge whether it is true or false. On the two occasions I accidentally clicked the AI button in a search engine the answers it provided were patently, obviously and ridiculously wrong. This may seem trivial compared to suicide and murder but, in a world where we are continually fed lies by politicians, advertisers and online ‘influencers,’ the last thing we need is a ubiquitous piece of software taking control of our internet searches, multiplying and spreading this false information.

Despite AI’s obvious flaws, it is now being inserted into search engines as a matter of course whether we want it or not. In many cases, it is now necessary to opt out of AI use every time you use some search engines. This is annoying.

AI is being inserted into more and more software, again whether we want it or not. Again, it is often necessary to actively opt out from it if you don’t want it and there is no option to download a version that is free from AI.

How long will it even be possible to opt out of AI use? How long before it simply operates in the background of our lives without our even being aware of its presence? AI is being foisted on us by tech giants, software developers and governments who have never bothered to ask those of us who use their products and services whether we want it or not, and many of us don't. Despite which, not having it is simply not an option. They shove it down our throats anyway.

This might be less of an issue if there were some way to remove AI from our systems, but there isn’t. Surely it’s possible for someone to come up with an open-source AI killer that can remove this junk from our software if we don’t want it. But no such software exists. Why not?

Meanwhile, people are using to AI to cobble together books on every subject under the sun to sell on outlets like amazon. You can often spot AI-generated books because of the hideous graphics on their covers, the terrible fonts used and the fact that, whatever the subject, they all seem to be written by supposed ‘doctors’ who frequently share the same name. As AI becomes more efficient, it will no doubt be harder to spot its products. However, given the way AI is programmed to function, it is highly likely that the entire contents will still be plagiarised from genuine authors’ legitimate work. I hope no one is ever fooled into buying this garbage, but I fear some already are.

In music too, AI makes it possible for people with no discernible talent to appear to have some musical ability by stealing the work of others who have genuine talent. It’s hard enough to make a living as a musician these days without some talentless, AI-using hack stealing your ideas and passing them off as their own.

Criminals have been quick to make use of AI. I have received several phone calls from a ‘woman’ who is obviously an AI-bot. ‘She’ claims to represent a company offering home improvement grants. When ‘she’ asks for details about me, I refuse to give them – you should never, ever give out personal details to cold callers – and ask if there is a website where I can find information about these ‘grants.’ ‘She’ then hangs up. Back-tracing the calls, they all come from different mobiles. The mobile numbers turn out to belong to real people in various parts of the country. The AI-bot clones their numbers and uses them for fraudulent purposes without their knowledge. Again, this happens because, and I can’t stress this enough, AI has no morality. It doesn’t care whether it's used by criminals or philanthropists. It has no way to differentiate between the two nor any interest in doing so. This is not intelligence. This is stupidity in the extreme.

AI’s ability to clone phone numbers and generate sort-of-realistic-sounding voices will certainly be employed to influence elections. The Putin administration in Russia is strongly interested in destabilising the west. This is why it used social media to support both the right-wing Brexit campaign in Britain and Donald Trump’s election as president in the USA.

AI is also being used to plan and execute major cyber attacks against companies, institutions and government departments, including denial-of-service and ransomware attacks.  Such attacks often originate in Russia, although it is hard to judge the extent to which the criminal gangs involved are either supported or tolerated by the Putin administration. That said, similar criminal gangs exist in most countries. AI has made their work so much easier.

Then there’s the use of AI in warfare. Now it is not only possible for wars to be fought almost entirely by drones so that no soldier ever directly confronts an enemy, those drones can now be controlled by AI so that no human need be involved in an attack at all, except as a victim of it. That way, no individual can be held to account for killing and maiming innocent civilians. Hooray! No more Bloody Sunday enquiries. More Bloody Sundays of course, just no enquiries after the event.

AI is also being weaponised by governments against their citizens. AI is a wonderful tool for government surveillance. From monitoring video cameras in public and private places to tapping phone calls and intercepting and reading emails, AI’s ability to spy on us is virtually unlimited. This might be OK if you’re more frightened of terrorists than of your own government, not so good if you are, say, a trades union member or official, a human or other animal rights campaigner, an eco-activist, a journalist, active in any kind of politics, libertarian cause, LGBTQ+ community support or ‘fringe’ religion, a musician, artist or writer. The list of groups and individuals that governments are so afraid of as to want to surveil them can be extended almost indefinitely. Governments are, by their nature, paranoid, often because they are doing things of which those they seek to rule would not approve if they found out about them.

Last but not least, there is the fact that AI requires vast data centres that consume energy like there’s no tomorrow, which there may not be if we continue to allow ourselves to be railroaded down the AI route. In 2024, AI data centres accounted for 1.5% of the world’s total energy use, or around 415 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s roughly equivalent to the energy usage of 150 million human households in industrialised countries. By 2030, AI energy consumption is expected to rise to at least 3% of global energy use and probably more. At a time when we are supposed to be cutting back our energy use in order to allay the worst effects of global warming, it shows a staggering lack of Human Intelligence (HI) to be building homes for AI that use as much energy in a year as 150 million homes for human beings. This too is stupidity in the extreme.

Those of us who care about these things need to fight back against the companies and governments who are forcing AI upon us before it’s too late. OK, it may already be too late, but let’s hope not. How can we do this? Well, here are some sites that suggest potentially useful things we can do:

https://togetheragainstai.com/

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/ai-con-hold-back-hype/

https://www.nesta.org.uk/feature/future-signals-2024/artists-fight-back-against-ai/

https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/gpe/4/2/article-p185.xml

There is another page link below that I am ambivalent about but is still worth a look. It advocates for activists to use AI for good and cites cases where this is already being done. It does, however, admit that there’s a massive imbalance between the good actors using AI and the bad. I’m still for opposing the damn thing altogether, but that’s just me. We all need to make up our own minds on this issue that has the power to impact all our futures, whether for good or ill.

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/how-autocrats-weaponize-ai-and-how-to-fight-back/

Good luck, humanity, but hopefully not goodnight,

Greywolf /|\

Published on Leave a comment on Reconstructing the West Kennett Long Barrow

The West Kennett Long Barrow rests atop a high ridge overlooking fields about a mile to the south of the Avebury henge in Wiltshire. Built in about 3650 BCE, the Barrow is a tomb-shrine, that is a structure in which the remains of the dead were placed which was (and still is) also a place of reverence for the living. It consists of a large earthen mound shaped like an extremely elongated triangle over 300 feet (100 meters) long. This would originally have been topped with the local white chalk, so would have shone out like a beacon, visible for miles around when the Sun illuminated it.
At the wider end of the mound is an entranceway that leads into a corridor flanked by four side chambers and leading to a larger rear chamber. All are constructed from large sarsen stones brought from stone fields only a few miles away. The gaps between the sarsens are filled in with smaller stones, in some places laid like dry-stone walling. These were brought from much further away.
Its initial phase of use as a tomb seems to have been very short, perhaps as little as a single generation. The skeletons of about 45 men, women and children were placed in the chambers. All seem to have first been exposed to the elements, or buried until all the flesh was gone from their bones, on Windmill Hill, a massive hilltop site of concentric banks and ditches a mile to the north-east.
It then remained open for more than a thousand years, during which it is assumed that people continued to visit the Barrow, enter its chambers and commune with the ancestors whose remains were interred there. The narrow passageway and small chambers suggest that very few people would ever have entered at any one time. Larger, communal ceremonies involving fires and feasting may have taken place in the open forecourt at the front of the tomb-shrine.
Eventually, around 2000 BCE, the chambers and passage were filled with rubble, earth and chalk. Some time later, a massive sarsen blocking stone (below) was erected in front of the former entrance, completely blocking it off.
The rear chamber was excavated in 1859 by psychiatrist and archaeologist, Dr John Thurnam (1810-1873), who was Medical Superintendent of Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum in nearby Devizes. He found a thick layer of chalk rubble containing bone, flint and pottery. When this was dug away, he found the skull of one child and five adult burials.
A thorough excavation of the whole site took place almost a century later, in 1955-6. This was overseen by the archaeologist, Stuart Piggott, author of many books, including The Druids (Thames & Hudson, 1968), which is very good on the archaeology but extremely rude about modern Druids; and fellow archaeologist, Richard Atkinson, who wrote what was, for many years, the definitive popular guide to Stonehenge, in which he was at pains to dismiss any idea that ancient Druids might have had anything to do with the monument.
On digging into the mound, they found that the passageway and some of the chambers had collapsed in on themselves. In order to fully excavate, it was therefore necessary to dismantle the tomb-shrine stone by sarsen stone. Each one was carefully numbered and its exact placing recorded. The idea was that they would all be put back in place at the end of the dig only upright, as they would have been when the Barrow was first built. Unfortunately, this was not done throughout, so some of the stones as they now stand are not in their original places. Also, the Ministry of Works insisted that the entrance to the passageway should be left open for ease of access to tourists.
The massive blocking stone that had been placed in front of the entrance in around 2000 BCE was also to be left in place but with a stepped walkway constructed around it, again for the convenience of visitors.
The entrance originally had a smaller sarsen inserted into it leaving a narrow hole through which a single person might crawl to access the passage and chambers. Before the blocking stone was erected, the morning Sun at the equinoxes in March and September would have shone through this hole, down the passage and illuminated the large rear chamber, filling it with light. Thanks to decisions made during the reconstruction, this effect no longer occurs.
On visiting the tomb-shrine, you will note that the rear chamber has no covering sarsen stone. Most tomb-shrines of this period were completed with a massive capstone that acted as a roof for the largest chamber, sometimes for the whole monument. At West Kennett, no capstone was found over the rear chamber or part of the passageway. The reconstruction settled for a concrete roof with a skylight in it to illuminate the interior of the rear chamber.
This morning, thinking about the Barrow because of its equinoctial alignment (the spring equinox having occurred yesterday), it struck me that the reason for the absence of a capstone for the rear chamber could well be because it was re-used as the blocking stone at the entrance. If you were going to block off the passageway, it would be far easier to use a stone that was already on site rather than dragging a new one, weighing several tons, from the stone-fields to the east of Avebury.
If I were in charge of the National Trust, English Heritage or Wessex Archaeology, I would remove the concrete roof, replace it with the sarsen blocking stone, then rebuild the entrance with its original narrow crawl-space, thereby allowing the equinoctial sunrise illumination of the rear inner chamber to be seen again as it was 5500 years ago. As with the midwinter illumination of the rear chamber at the New Grange tomb-shrine in Ireland, the West Kennett equinox light show could be broadcast live on the internet for those unwilling to crawl inside or unable to get to the site. Maybe we could also hold celebratory feasts for the ancestors again in the forecourt, bringing archaeology to life whilst honouring our ancestors. Hey. It gets my vote!
The plan below shows the approximate path of the light entering the passageway from the equinoctial sunrise. The beam seems to reflect off the last stone on the left of the passageway before entering the rear chamber. There is, however, some margin for error as the horizon to the east of the Barrow is far from perfectly flat, so the light beam may be off by a few degrees.
Even with the dubious reconstruction, the removal of all trace of ancestral remains and the lack of the equinoctial effect, the West Kennett Long Barrow retains a numinous, spiritual quality and many who visit still feel the presence of the ancestors there. Hale to the Ancestors and the Old Gods of our lands! Hale and blessed be!
Greywolf /|\

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Published on 1 Comment on The New Year of the Diamond Dogs?

“And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare,
the shutters lifted an inch on Temperance Building high on Poacher’s Hill
and red mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City.
No more big wheels. Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats,
and ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes,
coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers,
like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of LoveMe Avenue,
ripping and re-wrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now leg-warmers,
family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald.
Any day now.
The year of the Diamond Dogs.
‘This ain’t rock ‘n’ roll
This is genocide!’”

One of the things that has always appealed to me about the Druid path is its focus on the vital importance of the bardic arts. I was born with a soul-deep love of music, drawing, painting and storytelling, so those arts have always been hugely important to me. The 10th anniversary of the death of David Bowie on January 10th 2016 got me thinking about his art and its role in my Druidry.

I first saw Bowie live at Glastonbury Fair in 1971. As the bright Sun rose over Worthy Farm on the morning of Wednesday 23rd June, Midsummer’s Eve, I roamed the festival field singing The Incredible String Band song, ‘Sleepers Awake,’ from their 1969 LP, ‘Changing Horses.’ It was a beautiful sunny morning and I didn’t want my fellow festival-goers to miss it.

Bowie started his set at 5am as the rays of the newly risen Sun illuminated the first pyramid stage. It took me a while to realise who he was. I remember saying to someone, “Isn’t that the guy who did Space Oddity?” Among other songs, he performed ‘Changes’ and ‘Oh! You Pretty Things.’

That first Glastonbury was a remarkable event, not least because it was free. Yes, you heard me. Free. Last year, tickets cost just shy of £400 each. Changes indeed. As Bowie's set progressed, more people woke up and some stumbled down to the stage. By the time he closed the set with ‘Bombers,’ a song about the explosion of a nuclear bomb, there were enough people awake to give him a decent round of applause. He had gone onstage thinking it might be his last ever gig. Our applause convinced him to carry on. Near the end of the set, he told us, “I just want to say that you’ve given me more pleasure than I’ve had in a good few months of working, and I don’t do gigs any more because I got so pissed off with working, and dying a death every time... It’s really nice to have somebody appreciate me for a change.” I like to think I helped a bit by waking people up just before he came on.

The next time I saw him was on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2 on the night of February 7th 1972. The change that had taken place in the intervening 8 months was extraordinary. The long-haired, hippy Bowie of Glastonbury was now the legendary androgynous sci-fi pop god, Ziggy Stardust. Backed by the band we came to know as the Spiders From Mars, he performed ‘Queen Bitch’ and ‘Five Years.’ I was transfixed, entranced. Having grown up as a weird kid, an outsider, a freak, I knew what a lonely, difficult existence it could be, exacerbated by being one of a handful of hippies in an area predominantly inhabited by skinheads. As Ziggy, Bowie demonstrated that it was possible to actively, openly and magnificently celebrate one’s weirdness. From that night, Bowie’s career took off and I was a devoted fan. Throughout the rest of his career, he showed himself to be a shape-shifter, constantly re-inventing himself. I've long regarded shape-shifting as one of the core abilities of a Druid, one frequently represented in legends recorded in the medieval manuscripts of Wales and Ireland.

June ‘72 saw the release of ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars’ LP, which I immediately bought and listened to over and over again.

‘Diamond Dogs,’ the opening monologue from which is reproduced at the head of this piece, came out in May 1974. It too was played repeatedly. The monologue, titled 'Future Legend,' is a prime example of seership mediated through art, like the awenyddion of medieval Wales who spoke prophecies in spontaneous verse. Such seership is central to the ovate path in Druidry. In 1974, I would sometimes roam the streets of my home town proclaiming 'Future Legend' loudly, on one occasion joined by friend and co-conspirator, John Wilde, who later became lead singer with the band, Expandis. The apocalyptic tone of the whole album seemed to perfectly capture the sense of a world spiralling uncontrollably into decadence and decay following the death of ‘60’s optimism. 1974 was also the year I discovered the Druid path.

The ‘Let’s Dance’ album, released in 1983, was Bowie’s most commercially successful despite being one of his least artistically satisfying. Even so, in between the Nile Rogers-produced pop songs was one gem, a remix of ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire with Gasoline),’ the original of which graced the soundtrack of the 1982 film, ‘Cat People.’

This was adopted as the unofficial anthem of the British Druid Order on the day I asked Emma Restall Orr, craft name Bobcat, to become joint chief of the Order. Bobcat had been trying to persuade me to work with her since September 1993. In February of 1995, as we sat on a bench on Eastbourne seafront looking out across a grey, overcast, rough sea, I put the idea to her becoming joint chief. She said she would on one condition; that I allowed her to, as she put it, “Light a fire under the BDO.” I readily agreed, because that was exactly what I wanted. Her phrase brought to mind ‘Putting Out Fire with Gasoline.’ Bobcat turned out to be as big a Bowie fan as I am, having also found inspiration in him during a youth of ostracisation and rebellion. The fact that she is herself a Cat person made the track even more appropriate.

From the start of our working relationship, Bowie’s music was an important part of the bond between us. On our trips to America together, whilst being driven around US towns and cities we would sing the chorus to ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’ from the 1997 album, ‘Earthling:’

“I’m afraid of Americans
I’m afraid of the world
I’m afraid I can’t help it…”

We sang it in the same sardonic way that Bowie originally intended it. After all, some of our best friends are American. It has, however, taken on a whole new layer of meaning since the giant orange man-baby returned to the White House. With the change of an initial letter:

“Donny wants a brain
Donny wants to suck on a Coke
Donny wants a woman
Donny wants to think of a joke
Donny’s in America…
Donny looks up at the stars
Donny combs his hair,
and Donny wants pussy and cars
Donny’s in America…
and I’m afraid of Americans.”

Donny himself, of course, revels in the fact that the world is becoming increasingly terrified that his narcissistic petulance will plunge us into World War III, a war few of us are likely to survive.

But I digress. Or do I? After all, Druidry encourages us to honour and celebrate life and diversity, to work for harmony and with the spirits of Nature. Druidry should, therefore, encourage us to call out those who stand against peace and whose actions ravage our planet and threaten its inhabitants. The 18th century Druid revivalist, Iolo Morganwg, gave his Gorsedd of Bards of the Isle of Britain the motto, “The Truth Against the World,” meaning that we have a moral and spiritual duty to speak out against those in power who would spread lies and disharmony among us, against their petty greed and personal aggrandisement at the expense of others, against their warmongering and unwarranted arrogance.

The last time I saw Bowie perform live was at the NetAid concert in Wembley Stadium on October 9th 1999. Sadly, Bobcat couldn't make it. She was running a workshop in Ireland. The acoustics were terrible but his stage presence and the excellence of his backing band overcame them to turn in a wonderful set, starting with a pared-down version of ‘Life on Mars’ featuring just Bowie’s vocals and Mike Garson’s piano and ending with a rousing, foot-stomping rendition of ‘Rebel Rebel,’ a song which, perhaps more than any other, encapsulates all the reasons why people like myself and Bobcat love Bowie so much.

“You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl
Hey, babe, your hair’s alright
Hey, babe, let’s go out tonight
You like me and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine
You love bands when they’re playing hard
You want more and you want it fast.
They put you down, they say I'm wrong
You tacky thing, you put them on.
Rebel Rebel, you’ve torn your dress
Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel Rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so!”

Over the 52 years I’ve been calling myself a Druid, it’s become apparent that many of those attracted to the path are, like Bobcat and myself, what used to be called ‘weird’ but is now fashionably referred to as ‘neuro-divergent.’ For those of us who are so strangely blessed and cursed, Bowie embodied a beacon of hope and empowerment in an often hostile and determinedly disempowering world. We followed his many Ch-ch-ch-changes and thought, if he can do it, so can we. As he sang on the Whistle Test that transformative night in 1972, we looked at her, “so swishy in her satin and tat, in her frock coat and bippety-boppety hat,” and thought, “Oh, God, I could do better than that.” So we embraced the Ch-ch-ch-changes and found ourselves ‘Loving the Alien,’ and our lives and the world were hugely enriched for it.

At the heart of Druidry as we practice it in the British Druid Order is the concept of awen, a Welsh word variously translated as ‘inspiration,’ ‘poetic frenzy’ and ‘flowing, feminine spirit.’ We see it as primarily a gift of the goddess Ceridwen, whose name means ‘Close sexual partner.’ It is the divine source that inspires all art. The art it inspires goes on the inspire creativity in others, who inspire others in turn. Thus the spirit flows between people and across time. Bowie was one of the purest embodiments of awen to have emerged during my lifetime. We were blessed to have him.

And if 2026 does turn out to be the year the orange man-baby in the White House and the bald man-baby in the Kremlin bring us World War III, I can only hope that enough of us survive to roam the radioactive streets repeating loudly to anyone left alive to listen or, if not, to ourselves:

“And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare….”

So, erm, Happy New Year, and let’s do everything we can to ensure it isn’t our last, and personally, while I'm still alive, “I want eagles in my daydreams, diamonds in my eyes…”

Thank you, David, thank you,

Greywolf /|\

Published on Leave a comment on FREE STUFF 2: Music & the Open Source Revolution!

The Midwinter season of gift-giving fast approaches, so here’s a second selection of gifts for you that keep on giving throughout the year thanks to the generosity of groups and individuals around the world who devote their time to creating entirely free, open source software simply because they love doing it. Last time, we recommended LibreOffice, PDF24 and the Linux operating system. This time, we’re looking at the best open source music software. As ever, the programs listed can hold their own against, and even exceed in usability and functionality, paid software that sells for hundreds of dollars.
Personally, I love music and would feel bereft without it. I find it life-enhancing, enriching and inspiring. I listen to music all the time while I’m working, usually on random play so I never know what’s coming next. My hard drive holds more than 80,000 tracks across a wide range of genres from Renaissance Choral through Folk and World to Indie, Pop and Punk. Over the years, as my collection has grown, I’ve tried a lot of different players including VLC, Media Monkey, Winamp, Windows Media Player, the awful iTunes and others. The one that best enables me to access, build, curate and control my collection is MusicBee.
One thing I love about MusicBee is that it works straight away. No fuss, no complicated set-up and its user-friendly, intuitive interface means there’s no steep learning curve. You just point it at where you store your music and it does the rest for you. Ripping from CDs is easy and efficient via a drop-down menu or you can set MusicBee to automatically rip any music CD you put in your drive. If you prefer to find your sounds through streaming, MusicBee will help you there too. It’ll find album artwork for you, and if it can’t, it’s easy enough to find online, copy and paste into MusicBee. Unless, like me, your tastes run to the wilfully obscure, when you might occasionally have to resort to scanning the art from the CD, but again, copying and pasting it into MusicBee is easy.
By default, MusicBee displays lyrics when they’re available so you can sing along to your favourite tracks without fluffing the words. It has a built-in equalizer, but the pre-installed EQ settings work fine on my set-up, regardless of genre. MusicBee is configurable in a variety of ways but personally I find its original look and layout attractive and easy to navigate so just leave it as it is. One click toggles you to the neat mini-player mode that displays just cover art, artist name, track title, volume control and basic navigation. MusicBee isn’t a huge drain on resources either so it won’t freeze or crash your system.
All in all, whatever the size of your music collection and whatever genre you’re into, MusicBee is a great, immensely capable and easy-to-use music player. My only gripe is that it’s only available for Windows. There’s no Linux or Apple version. Which brings me to my next pick:

Having used free Linux operating systems since the 1990s, I've have tried quite a few Linux music players. The default is Rhythmbox, which comes ready installed on a lot of Linux OSes. It’s a perfectly good music player for most purposes, albeit not very exciting to look at or use. Then there’s Clementine, Audacious, VLC, Amarok and a whole bunch of others. They all have things to recommend them, but my current favourite is Strawberry I like it for many of the same reasons I like MusicBee. It’s configurable if you feel the need to tweak its settings, but works perfectly fine for me without any modification. It’s similarly easy to use; just point it at your music folder and let it do its thing. Like MusicBee, it’ll rip CDs or stream, retrieve lyrics and artwork and do all the other things you’d expect from a music player. Like MusicBee, it has no trouble handling my extensive library or sounding good across multiple genres without tweaking EQ. And unlike MusicBee, Strawberry is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OSes.
OK, that’s my top two picks for playing music. How about making music? The genius creators who make fully free, open source software have us well covered there too.
Among the best, and certainly the simplest, open source music creation software is Audacity. In fact, it’s so good, it’s hard to know where to start singing its praises. Maybe the interface, which is just so incredibly easy to understand, navigate and use. Audacity is one of the best software packages ever for user-friendliness. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste time browsing online manuals or helplines just to find out how to perform basic operations. I want something I can load up and use straight away. Audacity is all that and more. You can start recording music within minutes of installing it. You can record as many tracks as you want. You can add a wide range of professional-level tweakable effects to individual tracks or to multiple tracks at once. You can cut and paste to create your own loops. You can reverse drum loops for that great psychedelic effect the Beatles pioneered back in the 60s. You can pitch-shift to blend instruments in different keys.
You can record via a mic or instrument input or through an external mixer. The only problem I’ve encountered with Audacity is that it’s sometimes hard to initially configure it to record from a particular input. But once you’ve got that sorted, everything else is a doddle. And if you don’t play an instrument, you can still create great music using copyright-free clips and loops from free online sources like Pixabay. You can save your tracks in a variety of formats, the most common being mp3 and WAV.
I’ve used a lot of recording software, from high-end paid professional suites like Steinberg Cubase Pro to other freebies like Waveform or Cakewalk. While they may be able to do things that Audacity can’t, they’re not things I ever need to do and, for me at least, including them just makes the software overly complex, requiring a steep learning curve before you can actually use it. Audacity has a simple, clean interface that just makes all the basics so very easy. This allows you to concentrate on making music rather than learning how to use the software. For years now, Audacity has been the only music creation software I use. Plus it has the added bonus of working on Linux, Windows or Apple OSes, so you can record on whatever’s available and transfer the saved files to another platform with no problem. I love Audacity!
As ever, the wonderful folk who make this software available to us at absolutely no cost and without even any annoying adverts deserve our support. So, if you can, give ‘em a few bucks and help keep the open source revolution rolling.
Thanks, folks!
Greywolf /|\

PS. For the odd doubter who may be wondering what this has to do with Druidry; the foundation of Druidry is the bardic tradition, and music is fundamental to the bardic tradition, both as a source of awen (inspiration) and as a means to express our awen and transmit it to others. That's why there are triads devoted to music and why most of the old verses we now call poems are actually referred to in the text as songs. Taliesin sang.
And in case anyone thinks I'm getting paid to endorse the software recommended in these posts, I'm not. I'm recommending them because they are good and I think more people should know about how good they are and use them in their own creative endeavours as I use them in mine. I'm not even doing it for the free software, because all the software is free anyway :-)

Published on Leave a comment on FREE STUFF! Join the Open Source Revolution!

The Midwinter season of gift-giving may be past for another year, but there are some gifts that keep on giving throughout the year thanks to the generosity of groups and individuals around the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in open source software, that is software that is created to be used by anyone, anywhere, entirely free of charge. Beyond its obvious benefits for individual users, open source software proves once and for all that capitalism is not necessary for the smooth functioning of society. Open source programs can often hold their own against, and even exceed in usability and functionality, paid software that retails for hundreds of dollars.

Among the best known, most useful and most widely used examples of open source software is LibreOffice. On the Microsoft website, Microsoft Office Home 2024 is currently selling for £119. LibreOffice is completely free and does pretty much everything MS Office does just as well if not better. I’ve used open source office suites since I was introduced to computers in the early 1990s. I found LibreOffice about 20 years ago and have used it ever since, mostly its word processing and desktop publishing app, Writer. With Writer, I’ve produced everything from single-sheet advertising flyers to 480-page books and the entirety of the British Druid Order’s three distance learning courses, which now run to over 4,000 pages, profusely illustrated throughout. I’m not hugely tech-savvy but Writer’s design and intuitive user interface make it ideal for beginners and old hands alike. I’ve tried MS Office for the same tasks and find it incredibly clunky and requiring a steep learning curve before anything worthwhile can be produced. I’ll stick with LibreOffice for as long as it exists. It facilitates my work like nothing else I’ve ever found.

LibreOffice has the added advantage of being cross-platform, working equally well on MS or Linux operating systems and even that weird thing Apple produce. Its other included apps are Impress (presentations), Calc (spreadsheets), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing). I’ve used Impress for illustrated talks and it’s every bit as good as MS PowerPoint and I find it easier to create presentations in Impress.

Another widespread and incredibly useful example of open source programming is the Linux operating system. Most PCs and laptops bought these days come pre-installed with whatever iteration of Microsoft’s Windows OS is around at the time of manufacture, but you don’t have to stick with it. The last laptop I bought had MS Windows 11 installed. Windows 11 is full of bloatware and riddled with spyware that reports your every onscreen move to Microsoft, much of it designed so that it can’t be removed without rendering the OS inoperable. So I erased it and installed the Linux Ubuntu MATE OS in its place. The Linux OS is fully configurable, contains absolutely no bloatware or spyware, boots more quickly than Windows and runs more efficiently, as evidenced by the fact that it gives my laptop at least 50% more battery run time.

There are any number of flavours of Linux OS available so you can pick one that best suits you. My current favourite, Ubuntu MATE, looks good to start with and is easy to configure to look even better. It also runs well on older hardware, which is great for those of us on a tight budget.

The third of the triumvirate of freebies I’m recommending to you today is PDF24. If, like me, writing and desktop publishing are your things, you’ll know that PDF files are often at the core of both. LibreOffice allows you to easily save documents as PDF files, but only in a limited range of PDF formats. This is where PDF24 comes in. You can take an existing file and resave it in any one of a wide range of PDF formats. You can specify the dpi (dots per inch) of text and graphics within the saved file. You can compress PDFs for posting online or emailing. You can merge several PDF files into one. You can edit PDFs. In fact, you can do pretty much anything you need to do to a single PDF file or a group of them. It’s a brilliant piece of software and, again, it’s open source and totally free. You can download and install it on Windows. There's no Linux version at present, but all its tools can be accessed free online. Contrast this with Adobe Acrobat, which you can no longer even buy as a stand-alone program but now have to rent from the publisher at a cost just shy of £20 a month or nearly £240 a year for the Pro version, the only version that offers as much versatility as PDF24 offers for no cost at all. I discovered PDF24 last year and now wouldn’t be without it.

Of course, a lot of work goes into producing these brilliant pieces of software to give away, so the producers won’t say no if you want to give them a donation to keep them in coffee and doughnuts, but they don’t pester you to do so and won’t disable your software if you don’t. Oh, and they don’t include adverts for other products in their software either. They are kind, generous, lovely people and I am blown away by their generosity and genius.

So, join the open source revolution today and help smash the market place!

Published on Leave a comment on Nos Galan Gaeaf – Night of Winter Calends

“Hey-how for Hallowe’en!
A’ the witches tae be seen,
Some are black, an’ some green,
Hey-how for Hallowe’en.”
Traditional Scottish rhyme.

The Wheel of the Year rolls on, bringing us to the north-west of our circle and to October 31st, the festival known in Wales as Nos Galan Gaeaf, ‘the Night of Winter Calends,’ in Ireland as Samhain, ‘Summer’s End,’ and as Hallowe’en elsewhere. This is the third of the Teir Nos Ysbrydion, ‘Three Spirit Nights’ on which the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. It represents the conjunction of the elements of Water and Earth.
As at May Day, its opposite on the Wheel of the Year, Hallowe’en fires are lit on hilltops and cattle driven between them for protection and blessing. The Hallowe’en fires flare out in defiance of the coming winter dark, representing the Sun’s fire held in the wood that will blaze on our hearth fires, warming us through the cold months ahead. In some places, hearth fires are extinguished on this day and relit from the Hallowe’en fire. As at other fire festivals, people jump over the fires and blazing torches are carried around fields to ensure prosperity and protection. A variation on fire-jumping is to run sunwise (clockwise) around the Hallowe’en fires in a closing spiral. In a Health & Safety nightmare, it is said that the closer you can bear to get to the heat, the better the fortune you’ll enjoy during the year that follows.
In parts of Wales, there used to be fierce competition to see whose fire could be built highest and last longest, the whole day being devoted to carting as much flammable material as possible onto the chosen hilltop. The fire was lit to the blowing of horns and apples and potatoes were roasted in it while folk danced, leapt and whooped noisily around it. The cooked apples and potatoes were eaten while others darted through the fire and smoke, casting stones into the fire. When the fires had died down, everyone ran home pell-mell to avoid being caught by Hwch Ddu Gwta (pron. hooch thee GOOta), ‘the Tailless Black Sow.’ In Denbighshire, they cried:

Adref, adref am y cynta’,
Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola!
Home, home, let each try to be first,
and may the Tailless Black Sow take the hindmost!

The sacred Druid Isle of Anglesey retained a fuller version:

Hwch Ddu Gwta a Ladi Wen heb ddim pen
Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola’
Hwch Ddu Gwta nos G’langaea
Lladron yn dwad tan weu sana!

Tailless Black Sow and White Lady without any head,
May the Tailless Black Sow snatch the hindmost!
Tailless Black Sow of Winter’s Eve,
Thieves coming along knitting stockings!

It’s tempting to see “the Tailless Black Sow” as embodying the Hag of Winter, perhaps she who, in the form of a Sow, leads the enchanter Gwydion on his search for the wounded lord of light, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, in the Fourth Branch of Y Mabinogi. Perhaps the “White Lady without any head” is the winter Hag in human form. In Scotland, the Cailleach Bheur, the Hag of Winter, awakens on this night to begin her long, cold reign that lasts until the next May Day rolls around. As for the “Thieves coming along knitting stockings,” your guess is as good as mine.
In Wales, the bonfire was often followed by a communal feast indoors, after which songs were sung, stories told, games of skill played and divinations made. The veil between the worlds being so thin, this was a prime night for divination. A common practice was to mark stones and place them in a circle in the hot ashes of the fire. Finding your stone whole and undisturbed the following morning assured you of a good year ahead. A curious practice in Tenby was to drill nine holes in the shoulder-blade of a Sheep and sleep with it beneath the pillow. This is supposed to result in prophetic dreams and may be a variation on scapulomancy, the practice of divining from marks found on the shoulder blades of sacrificial animals which is attested in classical Greece and apparently still found in rural parts of Greece and Serbia.
Of all the nights of the year, Nos Galan Gaeaf is that on which ghoulies, geesties and long leggity beasties are out and about in greatest force. Witches take to the skies on broomsticks, making their way to the greatest Sabbat of the year. Gwyn ap Nudd with his white Hounds or his Saxon counterpart, Woden, with his ravenous Wolves ride the night at the head of the Wild Hunt, leading the souls of the dead towards their long rest in the worlds beyond. Meanwhile, warm indoors, we light candles in our windows to guide and welcome home the wandering spirits of deceased family members, inviting them to join our feasts, putting out food and setting places at table for them. As Druids, we often broaden this remembrance to all our ancestors, those of blood and spirit, and make offerings of food and drink, prayer and ceremony to all who have passed to the Otherworlds of the dead.

The above is extracted from BDO bardic course booklet 17, The Wheel of the Year.

In south-east England, where I was born and brought up, a lot of the excitement associated with Hallowe'en in the countries of the 'Celtic fringe' has been transferred to November 5th, Bonfire Night, following Guy Fawkes and his companions' unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. This is still enthusiastically celebrated by several Bonfire Societies in Sussex, one of the largest being in Battle, where giant effigies of present-day political figures are set fire to and exploded amidst much merriment.
'Trick or treating' remains popular amongst children at Hallowe'en. Often dismissed as an American import, its roots actually go back to Early Modern Scotland. The 'guising,' i.e. dressing up that goes with it has ancient roots and was originally designed to prevent revellers being identified either by their neighbours or by the nocturnal spirits who roamed the night. So frock up in your best fright wig. You'll be continuing an ancient tradition, and as my old friend, Robin Williamson, says, "If it's traditional that means it must be good!"
Blessings of Winter Calends,
Greywolf /|\

Nos Galan Gaeaf ceremony in our roundhouse. Photo by Morten Ris, 2017.

Published on Leave a comment on Autumn Equinox – Alban Elfed – ‘Birth of the Ripe Quarter’

In the northern hemisphere, the autumn equinox normally falls on September 22nd, 23rd or 24th. This year it’s on Sunday 22nd. Equinox means ‘equal night’ because day and night are of equal length at the spring and autumn equinoxes.
Equinoctial alignments at Neolithic sites in the British Isles are less common than those relating to midwinter or midsummer but some sites do have them. Near where I live is the West Kennett Long Barrow (below). When first constructed, the eastern end of its passageway was partially covered by large stone slabs that left only a narrow aperture just big enough for a person to crawl through. On the morning of the equinox, the Sun shining through this aperture would have illuminated the rear chamber of the tomb-shrine. It would have been quite a sight.

West Kennett Long Barrow - photo by Greywolf
The West Kennett Long Barrow. Photo by Greywolf, May 24th 2018.

All five of its chambers and its central passageway contained the long bones and skulls of numerous ancestors, initially placed there in around 2650 BCE with a few more added centuries later.

Plan of the interior of the West Kennett Long Barrow
Plan of the interior of the West Kennett Long Barrow

The eastern entrance is now as it was reconstructed in the 1950s by a team of archaeologists led by Stuart Piggott, now best remembered for his book, The Druids, a large part of which is devoted to his strong antipathy towards modern Druid revivalists, whom he describes as “misleading and rather pathetic.” Thanks, Stuart, we love you too. Piggott’s team removed the slabs that had left the small crawl hole because the Ministry of Works wanted there to be easy access for tourists. They also rebuilt the collapsed sections of the central aisle and side chambers, although their reconstruction does follow the orientation of the original passageway. Unfortunately, they left in place the huge blocking stones erected when the barrow was taken out of use in around 2000 BCE. These completely block the rising equinoctial Sun from shining into the barrow.
There being two equinoxes each year, one in the spring on March 20th or 21st, the other in autumn, it is hard to judge which was most significant to our ancestors. In the case of the West Kennett Long Barrow, I tend towards the autumn equinox because of a vision I had there of what was clearly a harvest-related rite being carried out in a wheat field a little to the west of the barrow mound. That said, I feel that both dates were and are of ritual, mythical, practical and agricultural significance.

Lammas dance reconstructed at a Druid camp, Lammas, 2010
Lammas dance joyously recreated at a Druid camp, Lammas, 2010

The Welsh name of this festival, Alban Elfed, aptly translates as ‘Birth of the Ripe Quarter,’ for this is a celebration of the safe gathering in of the harvest and the abundance of fruit on trees and bushes at this time of year. Many of its ancient customs have been transferred to the Christian festival of Michaelmas on September 29th.  Being a celebration of harvest, many of these customs revolve around communal feasting and sharing food with less fortunate members of the community. Scotland is a rich source of folklore and folk customs associated with Michaelmas, dedicated to Saint Michael, an other-than-human saint who is an archangel.
In his Carmina Gadelica (vol. 1, pages 200-217), Scottish folklorist, Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912), describes the festivities as follows:

“To the young the Day is a day of promise, to the old a day of fulfilment, to the aged a day of retrospect. It is a day when Pagan cult and Christian doctrine meet and mingle like the lights and shadows on their own Highland hills.
“The Eve of St. Michael is the eve of bringing in the carrots, of baking the ‘struan,’ of killing the lamb, of stealing the horses. The Day of St. Michael is the day of the early mass, the day of the sacrificial lamb, the day of the oblation ‘struan,’ the day of the distribution of the lamb, the day of the distribution of the ‘struan,’ the day of the pilgrimage to the burial-ground of their fathers, the day of the burial-ground service, the day of the burial-ground circuiting, the day of giving and receiving of the carrots with their wishes and acknowledgments, and the day of the ‘oda’ - the athletics of the men and the racing of the horses. And the Night of Michael is the night of the dance and the song, of the merry-making, of the lovemaking, and of the love-gifts.”

This pleasing description makes it sound as though Michaelmas combines favourite elements from all the other calendar festivals, from the games, merriment and licentiousness of May Eve and Midsummer to Hallowe’en’s concern for the dead. Note also the decidedly pagan presence of animal sacrifice, in this case of a “male lamb, without spot or blemish.” The struan cake, Carmichael tells us

“… is made of all the cereals grown on the farm during the year. It represents the fruits of the field, as the lamb represents the fruits of the flocks. … The struan should contain a peck of meal, and should be baked on ‘uinicinn,’ a lamb-skin. The meal is moistened with sheep’s milk, the sheep being deemed the most sacred animal. For this purpose the ewes are retained in milk till St. Michael’s Eve, after which they are allowed to remain in the hill and to run dry. The struan is baked by the eldest daughter of the family, guided by her mother, and assisted by her eager sisters. As she moistens the meal with the milk the girl softly says -
“Ruth agus rath an treo. 'Progeny and prosperity of family,'
“Run Mhiclieil, dion an Teor. 'Mystery of Michael, protection of Trinity'.”

Apollo Maponus as depicted on an altar stone (RIB 583) from the Roman fort of Ribchester in Lancashire
Apollo Maponus as depicted on an altar stone (RIB 583) from the Roman fort of Ribchester in Lancashire

Many websites, Wiccan and Druid groups refer to the autumn equinox as ‘Mabon.’ Mabon (‘child’), son of Modron (‘mother’) features in the Mabinogi tale of ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen.’  His name derives from that of a youthful Roman-British hunter god, Maponos (left). The link between Mabon and the autumn equinox was made by an American Wiccan, Aidan Kelly, in the early 1970s (he explains his reasons here). There is no evidence for such a link prior to that date. The Coligny calendar ascribes Mapanos, who may or may not be the same god, to the date, 15 Rivros, usually reckoned to be in late July, so close to the usual date of Gwyl Awst/ Lammas/ Lughnasad, i.e. August 1st, rather than the autumn equinox six weeks later.  The Mabinogi tales represent Mabon as a hunter, born at Midwinter, taken from his mother when three nights old, imprisoned until sought out by King Arthur and his allies with the aid of the world's five oldest animals. There is no hint of any link with the harvest, although the Stag hunting season in Britain traditionally ran from July 1st to October 20th, a period that encompasses both Gwyl Awst and Alban Elfed. In the story of Culhwch and Olwen, Mabon hunts a giant Wild Boar called Twrch Trwyth. I'm not sure what the Wild Boar hunting season was in medieval Britain and they had been hunted to extinction by the 14th century, but in modern Europe the season seems to run from early October through to late January, again suggesting Mabon may be associated with winter more than autumn and harvest.

Blessings of the Season,
Greywolf /|\

Published on Leave a comment on Gwyl Awst, Lughnasad, Lammas – August 1st

This festival is fortunate enough to have a massive tome dedicated entirely to it: the 700-page The Festival of Lughnasad: A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of Harvest, by Máire MacNeill, first published in 1962. If you're lucky enough to find a copy that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I highly recommend it. The reason it warrants such a weighty volume is that there are so many survivals not only in every part of Ireland but also in Scotland, Wales and England. It survived in so many places because the harvest was, for thousands of years, a pivotal point of the year on which survival depended. If the harvest failed, people and animals starved, therefore our ancestors took ceremonial action to ensure that the harvest was well and truly blessed. MacNeill concludes that the modern folk festival is a survival from an earlier pagan rite that included the following elements:

"[A] solemn cutting of the first of the corn of which an offering would be made to the deity by bringing it up to a high place and burying it; a meal of the new food and of bilberries of which everyone must partake; a sacrifice of a sacred bull, a feast of its flesh, with some ceremony involving its hide, and its replacement by a young bull; a ritual dance-play perhaps telling of a struggle for a goddess and a ritual fight; an installation of a head on top of the hill and a triumphing over it by an actor impersonating Lugh; another play representing the confinement by Lugh of the monster, blight or famine; a three-day celebration presided over by the brilliant young god or his human representative. Finally, a ceremony indicating that the interregnum was over, and the chief god in his right place again."

In the British Druid Order, we primarily know the festival by its Welsh name, Gwyl Awst, 'the August Feast.' It is centred on the traditional date of August 1st, by which time much of the harvest has these days been gathered in, providing for the feast. In our ceremonial cycle, drawn from the Fourth Branch of Y Mabinogi, that of Math, son of Mathonwy, Gwyl Awst sees the marriage of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, young lord of light, to the flower maiden, Blodeuwedd. He represents the fertilising rays of the Sun, she the burgeoning forth of vegetation from the Earth. Our ceremony includes the singing of that famed harvest song, John Barleycorn:

There were three men came out of the west,
their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die.

They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head,
And these three men made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn was dead.

They let him lie for a very long time,
‘til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head
and so amazed them all.

They let him stand ‘til Midsummer’s Day
‘til he looked both pale and wan,
And little Sir John’s grown a long long beard
and so become a man.

They hired men with their scythes so sharp
to cut him off at the knee,
They rolled him and tied him by the waist,
serving him most barbarously.

They hired men with their sharp pitchforks
who pricked him to the heart,
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he’s bound him to a cart.

They wheeled him around and around a field
‘til they came onto a barn,
And there they made a solemn oath
on poor John Barleycorn.

They hired men with their crabtree sticks
to cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he served him worse than that
For he’s ground him between two stones.

And it’s little Sir John in the nut brown bowl
and it’s brandy in the glass,
And little Sir John in the nut brown bowl
proved the strongest man at last.

For the huntsman he can’t hunt the fox
nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can’t mend kettle or pots
without a little barleycorn.

Just about every folk band in Britain has recorded a version of this at one time or another and many are available online. My favourite, and not just because it was the first I ever heard, is not by a folk band at all but by jazz-folk-rock fusion pioneers, Traffic, from their 1970 LP, John Barleycorn Must Die. Here it is in a stunningly brilliant live performance by the band featuring Steve Winwood on guitar and lead vocal, Jim Capaldi on tambourine and backing vocal and Chris Wood on flute:

May your harvest be blessed,
Greywolf /|\

Published on Leave a comment on Celebrating May Eve/May Day/Calan Mai/Beltaine in Style!

“With the merry ring, adieu the merry spring,
For summer is a-come unto day,
How happy is the little bird that merrily doth sing,
In the merry morning of May.”

Verse from the ‘Day Song’ sung on May 1st at Padstow in Cornwall.

Green Man maskAt this time of year in the UK, we’re peculiarly blessed with opportunities to publicly celebrate our Druid spirituality. May Day is one of our ancient festivals that has maintained a rich tradition of celebrations throughout the four nations, though often now celebrated on the first Monday in May, which was designated a bank holiday in 1978, rather than on May 1st. It survived a 1993 attempt by John Major’s Conservative government to remove it as a bank holiday and replace it with Trafalgar Day in October. David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition revived the idea in 2011, again without success. The reason for these attempts to suppress May Day is that it had become linked with International Workers Day, which grew out of a resolution passed by the 1904 Sixth Conference of the Second International which called on “all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace.” This was enthusiastically taken up by the Trade Union movement in the UK who organised colourful and well-attended marches across the UK on the day.

May blossomMay Day’s origins are, however, far older, stemming from a pagan celebration of the arrival of the year’s summer half, just as Hallowe’en marks the arrival of its winter half. May Day marks winter’s last gasp, the onset of warmer weather, the return of green growth to the vegetable realm, the birth of wild and domestic animals and birds and thus fertility in general. It has always been one of the most widely and enthusiastically celebrated of traditional festivals throughout Europe.

May Day Morris dancer at Ham HillMay Day traditions include bathing one’s face in May morning dew to restore or retain a youthful appearance; young people cutting twigs from flowering May (i.e. Hawthorn) trees and using them as ‘May gads’ to lightly whip other young persons, particularly those they are attracted to; lighting pairs of fires between which domestic animals are driven to purify and protect them through the coming year; dancing, especially Morris dancing; dressing as animals or other non-human beings, a practice known in the UK as ‘guising’; electing a young woman to act as ‘May Queen,’ and often a young man as her consort; staging mock battles between the forces of summer, led by the May Queen and her consort, and the forces of winter, often led by an old woman who is often a man in drag; and decorating the home with seasonal flowers.

Many parts of the British Isles continue to hold May festivities in which members of the public may take part. Beltaine fires are still kindled in some parts of Ireland. Peebles in the Scottish Borders holds an annual celebration and a massive, and gloriously Pagan, Beltane Fire Festival takes place on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. In Wales, celebrations traditionally began with the lighting of a May Eve bonfire on Nos Galan Haf, the ‘Night of the Calends of Summer,’ followed the next day by dancing and the singing of May carols. If you fancy making a joyful noise, Cornwall has the May Horns celebration in Penzance, featuring a giant Crow and high-pitched whistles made from Sycamore; the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss festival; and assorted giants; Shropshire has the Clun Green Man Festival and other events at Shifnal and elsewhere; Sussex has its Jack-in-the-Green Festival centred around Hastings Castle but taking over the whole town; Morris dancers greet the May morning sunrise on the ridge above the Long Man of Wilmington.

Edinburgh: Beltane Fire FestivalMythago Morris dance maskMost of these events are happy to have Druids simply turn up and take part as spectators. If you’d like to be more actively involved, you could contact the organisers and see if they’re amenable to having some Druidic input. Personally, I’ve been happy just to join in with the other drummers who attend the Jack-in-the-Green Festival in Hastings. In the 1990s, Tim Sebastion, late founder of the Secular Order of Druids, researched a local celebration in Frome that had died out and revived it with support from the town council, mayor and local traders. It’s still running as an annual event. Or you could join a Morris team. There are now a number of Pagan Morris sides in the UK. Many of them dress and dance in the ‘Border Morris’ style. Some weave dances into folk dramas depicting historical and/or legendary events. All are hugely entertaining and fun to hang out with. All eagerly welcome new recruits, whether dancers, musicians, or both.

The plethora of public May Day events throughout the British Isles mean that it’s not necessary to seek out a dedicated Druid grove in order to ceremonially celebrate the end of winter and beginning of summer.

Long Man of Wilmington, SussexIf you want something with a more specifically Druidic focus, there are groups who hold open rites at various sacred sites including the Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex, the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, the Stanton Drew stone circles south of Bristol and the Avebury henge in Wiltshire. Many of these were inspired by the open Gorsedd founded by the British Druid Order at Avebury in 1993. Some use the original rite I composed for Avebury as a template. You can find a copy HERE.

An online search or a visit to your local library or museum may, as Tim Sebastion found, reveal specific local celebrations you might like to revive in whole or in part. The same may also reveal little-known local sacred sites that might provide a magical venue for your celebrations. If you’re lucky enough to have a decent-sized garden, a May Eve bonfire makes a great focus for celebrating the joy of summer’s return.

However you choose to celebrate, may your celebrations be truly blessed.
So may it be!

Greywolf /|\

And now, for your delectation and delight, here's Steeleye Span performing their excellent rendition of the Padstow May Day Song....

Published on Leave a comment on “Of War and Peace the Truth Just Twists…”

[Bob Dylan, from ‘The Gates of Eden,’ on Bringing it All Back Home (1965)]

Here we are then, 24 years into the 21st century and once again teetering on the brink of a Third World War. As a child during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the fear of nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union was so real that I took a spade from my father’s tool shed and dug a fall-out shelter in the sand dunes near my parents’ bungalow. I’m not sure why. There were concrete 'pillboxes' left over from the Second World War among the dunes that had walls three feet thick and would have provided more protection than a few feet of sand. I think I just wanted to feel like I was doing something rather than just sitting waiting for the world to end.

I have never been a big fan of war. Observing playground fights in my first year at my primary school showed me that the only thing fighting ever achieved was someone getting hurt, thus fuelling anger and a desire for revenge. Even at four years old, I realised that what applied to little children also applied to the bigger playground fights of grown-ups, the ones called wars. I therefore became a pacifist.

And yet, despite the overwhelming negativity of war, it is frequently lauded as a heroic enterprise to be applauded. I have never fathomed why we heap praise on those who kill others in wars. In peacetime, murder is seen as a bad thing. According to the Bible, the Christian God said we should not kill. Yet we pin medals on those who do and hold parades to honour them. This seemed like madness when I was four years old and it still does.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, I did not want America to give in to the USSR, or vice versa. I just wanted both sides to grow up and behave decently and sensibly towards each other.

In my teens, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. I knew a Czech refugee, Piotr, who had left shortly before the tanks rolled in. He ended up in England, studying chemistry at the University of Sussex. He was warm, friendly, fiercely intelligent and funny. It seemed an obscenity that anyone should want to invade a country that had such people in it.

In 2022, refugees fled from Ukraine as Russian tanks rolled across its borders and bombs and cruise missiles struck military and civilian targets. The Ukrainian president called on every male between the ages of 18 and 60 to take up arms and fight the invaders. The people of Ukraine have tough choices to make, literal life and death choices. The Russian people and the soldiers in the invasion force also have choices to make. Do they want war? Why on earth would anyone in their right minds want war?

As a lifelong pacifist, I wonder what my response would be if it happened here in the UK. I like to think I would remain true to my principles, perhaps displaying the sort of courage of the young people who placed flowers in the rifle barrels of National Guardsmen in the USA in the 1960s or the young men in white shirts who stood in front of tanks as they rolled into Tienanmen Square in Beijing in the 1980s.

Western condemnations of Russian aggression would ring less hollow if the US and UK hadn’t led the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, lied through their teeth about the reasons for it, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens and destroyed the infrastructure of the country to such an extent that much of it is still not functioning more than two decades later. That invasion also created the Islamic State movement that has since destabilised countries in Asia and Africa and placed those in Europe and North America on perpetual terrorist alert. The law of unintended consequences and further proof that violence breeds violence.

Vladimir Putin justifies his invasion partly on the grounds that Ukraine has invested in a Westernised form of democracy that he feels threatened by. Since the First World War, successive US governments have undermined, destabilised and invaded countries in South America, Asia and Africa whenever they have looked like adopting anything resembling socialism. Is that any better?

Then, in October 2023, fanatical Hamas militants murdered nearly 1,200 unarmed men, women and children in Southern Israel, kidnapped 250 and raped, tortured and wounded many more. The Israeli government has responded by killing more than 30,000 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children in the Gaza Strip. How either of these actions is supposed to benefit anyone is beyond me. Again, I wonder what my response would be if it were my family being shot at, bombed, raped, tortured or kidnapped. That would be the ultimate test of my pacifist ideals. Many of those living in the Be’eri Kibbutz when it was attacked on October 7th were pacifists. I’m sure many of those subsequently killed in the Gaza Strip also held pacifist views. 12,000 of them were children. I’m sure the vast majority of people in both communities would rather live in peace with their neighbours than live with the perpetual threat of death. A substantial majority of people in the UK opposed the invasion of Iraq. It was our government, led by Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that pressed ahead with it. A substantial part of the Israeli population does not want war. Israel's right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is driving it forward.

Since invading the Gaza Strip, Israel is now also involved in conflict with its neighbours in Syria and with Iran. The Middle East is once again, as so often in the past, often as a direct result of Western interference, a powder keg that runs the risk of initiating a Third World War. My fervent hope is that, as happened after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the prospect of such a devastating global conflict will re-energise the global peace movement. In the early 1960s it took just just five years for it to grow from a few people marching against nuclear weapons to a global mass movement that came close to toppling governments around the world. Those governments responded to the threat of peace with violence. Our mistake was that some of us reacted to their violence with violence of our own. From that moment, the peace movement was doomed. In 1968, it was beaten into submission. Russia crushing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia was paralleled by police and soldiers clubbing and shooting protestors in Paris, London, Tokyo, Chicago and many other cities worldwide. Up until then, it really looked and felt as though we might win. I still think we could have done had we continued to meet state violence with pacifist solidarity and courage. Doubtless many will feel I am a hopeless idealist. In fact, despite it all, I remain an idealist with hope.

I believe that if people remain free in their hearts and minds, nothing any external or internal force tries to impose upon them will have any long term effect. I wish them well. I fervently hope that world leaders finally come to agree upon with the majority of their people, learn the lesson I learnt in the school playground when I was four years old, that violence simply hurts people and breeds more violence, admit the futility of war and put an end to it. If the human race is to survive, prosper and live well, the cycle of violence must be broken. More violence is not the answer. Ultimately, the only rational response to violence is peace.

In the Spring that preceded 1967’s ‘Summer of Love,’ Martin Luther King wrote:

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), page 67.

A year later, Dr. King was assassinated. His truth and his dream live on.

As we say at the beginning of many Druid ceremonies,
“May there be peace throughout all the world,”

Greywolf /|\