“It was fifty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught a band to play ...”
I was fortunate enough to turn fourteen in April 1967, just in time for what became known as the Summer of Love, the high point of the hippy movement. The central philosophy of that movement is the unarguable one that if people were nice to each other rather than doing each other down or beating each other up, the world would be an enormously better place. This was more pithily summed up in the slogan of the time, ‘Make Love, Not War.’
The other great slogan of the hippy era was ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.’ The message here is to ‘expand your mind through meditation and/or the use of hallucinogens, particularly Cannabis, LSD, Peyote, Mescaline or Psylocibin, allow these to open your mind to layers of reality beyond the physical, then follow the promptings of what you find to step aside from the culture of consumerism and personal greed and create a new society based on shared values of peace, love and understanding.’
Although I would argue that the hyping of hallucinogenic drugs in the late 1960s as a ‘short-cut to God’ was naively optimistic, the rest of the message again holds true and has withstood the test of time.
The Summer of Love was followed by 1968’s year of global revolution as what had been the ultimate pacifist movement was infiltrated by promoters of violence, while governments around the world realised that they could force peaceful demonstrators to resort to violence by having the police and the military launch increasingly violent attacks against them. Any hint of resistance from a single protestor could then be used by government forces as an excuse to further increase their own levels of violence. This is a tactic still in use today, enabling increasingly oppressive regimes around the world to maintain control over their populations. While it is common wisdom that the 1968 riots in London, Paris, Tokyo and many other cities came close to toppling several governments, what has been largely buried by history as ‘an inconvenient truth’ is that what really terrified those governments was the global movement for peace that had preceded the riots. Governments understand war and violence and have ample firepower with which to quell riots. What they really don’t understand are peace and love, especially not when, as with the hippy movement, those core values are spread through the arts and with healthy doses of surrealist humour.
A hallmark of the Summer of Love was the ‘Love-In.’ Love-Ins were events that were simply announced rather than organised, on a principle similar to the ‘flash-mobs’ of social media, except coordinated almost entirely by word of mouth and beautiful posters. People would congregate at a chosen venue, normally a public park, musicians would play, dancers dance, painters paint canvases or people’s bodies, and everyone would have a good time. Naturally such events were frowned upon by the authorities, bureaucracies being notoriously incapable of tolerating the idea of people having good times, especially if they didn’t have a license.
Another hallmark of 1967’s Summer of Love was the extraordinary quality of the music of the period. This was the year that saw the release of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Are You Experienced?’ and ‘Axis: Bold As Love,’ the self-titled first LP by The Doors and its follow-up, ‘Strange Days,’ Love’s ‘Forever Changes,’ Cream’s ‘Disraeli Gears,’ the Moody Blues’ ‘Days of Future Passed,’ Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ and ‘After Bathing at Baxter’s,’ The Who’s ‘Sell-Out,’ ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico,’ The Incredible String Band’s ‘5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion,’ Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’ and ‘A Gift From a Flower to a Garden,’ Otis Redding’s ‘Live in Europe,’ Nirvana’s ‘The Story of Simon Simopath,’ Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew and Son...’ Well, I could go on, but you get the picture. It really was a golden year for experimentation in popular music the like of which has seldom been seen before or since.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the music of the time is the extent to which it both reflected and drove the global movement for peace. One of the key tracks of the year had actually been recorded over an unprecedented six months during 1966. Released in October '66, it remained high in the US and UK singles charts at the beginning of 1967 and did much to set the tone for the year ahead with its aural complexity and its lyrics that seemed to blend individual with universal love. It remains one of the finest singles ever recorded, a tribute to the extraordinary genius of its composer, Brian Wilson, lyrically assisted by Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love. It is, in case you hadn’t guessed, The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’ (see video below). Wilson has stated on many occasions that his aim with all the music of the Beach Boys was to put out good, positive feelings into the world. ‘Good Vibrations’ is the ultimate expression of that aim and still, to my ears, sounds as fresh today as it did half a century ago coming out of the little transistor radio I had permanetly clamped to my left ear. May it be heard again around the world in 2017 and usher in another Summer of Love to counteract the negativity that seemed to characterise so much of the preceding year. As The Beatles sang in the middle of 1967, "All You Need is Love."
So may it be!
Peace, love and all good blessings,
Greywolf /|\
A crazy idea came to me on the train taking me to the 2016 
The idea had three main sources of inspiration; one was the observation that there seems to be an unusual amount of what might be termed ‘weird shit’ going on in the world at the moment; next was the way in which the stand being taken by the 
portraying native European deities accompanied by serpents. The most famous is that on the 
see the DAPL oil pipeline as that Black Snake and, therefore, see opposition to it as both a vital necessity and a sacred duty. I had already been led to the conclusion that individual healing in our Druid tradition comes about partly through invoking the power of a White Serpent of Healing to set against the power of a Black Serpent that brings disease. My thinking for this roundhouse ceremony was to try to harness the power of the White Serpent to oppose the 
For use in ceremony, Chaga needs to be brewed for at least four hours. This meant that a few of us had to miss the Saturday evening eisteddfod and go to the roundhouse shortly after 7pm to begin the brewing process. Amanda, who had taken part in an initiation in the roundhouse, stayed on to set up the tripods over the central fire to support the two pots in which we would brew the Chaga. The water was already heating when I arrived. We sat and talked for a while as we waited for it to boil. Then we began adding Chaga, taking it in turns to put a handful into the two pots and stir them. We talked through ideas about what we might do during the ceremony and the Chaga crew came up with several ideas while helping my sketchy ones to take shape. For the rest, I was relying on the spirits to guide us, and on all those who came, both seen and unseen, to bring their own inspiration and ideas to the mix. 
As well as making prayers for the protectors at Standing Rock, we had been asked to pray for those standing against another oil pipeline in Florida, which we did. I also wanted to send some energy and protection to the 
The Moon has its own serpentine associations, its nightly waning from the full being likened to a snake shedding its skin. A snake within a Moon appears on many Celtic coins, as in the top left corner of this image from our 
This phase of the year’s cycle is reflected in, among others, the Greek 
One of our group brought a flag bearing the symbol of the 
We cast our circle with sound and saining herbs, we invoked into it all those powers for good that we work with, the spirits of place, the elemental spirits and guardians of the four directions, of our ancestors of blood and spirit, of the old gods of our lands, and of the White Serpent of healing (as painted on my drum, right) and the Dragon power through which it also manifests. We chanted the Awen, the holy spirit of inspiration and creativity. We shared Chaga brewed on our sacred fire. We drummed and chanted long into the night. From around 2am, people began to drift away, thanking our ancestors as they passed across the threshold and went in search of sleep.
My lone drumming vigil continued until around 6.30am, at which time, without prompting from me, the others began to stir, wake up, and reach for their drums. We formed a circle around the central fire, linked hands and chanted the Awen again. Then we began to drum the sunrise, beginning quietly and building to a thundering crescendo that carried us across the moment of dawn and into the light of a new day, the day of the New Moon, blessed by the White Serpent of Healing.
