What is the role of the Bardic tradition in the early 21st century? When the world is led by business, computers, and the apparent need to better ones current position, why look back at all? Surely the future is the place we should be looking towards, not the past.

Druidry has sometimes been accused of looking back to a so-called ‘Golden Age’, that somehow our ancestors ‘knew something’ and that over the centuries we have lost that knowledge. The idea being that this lost secret is a connection with the natural world, the Old Gods and that they lived together with the forces of Nature. Our modern way of life does feed a disconnection with Nature, as has two millennia of a dominant Patriarchal religion that teaches that the world, and all its creatures are to be used by Humanity for whatever purposes it needs. Our challenge is to change that, and the modern Bardic tradition can help this to happen. It does this by shifting our attitudes towards our environment, and the ‘unseen’ world.

Everyday millions of people get up in the morning and, with bleary eyes, make their breakfast. Some will tune into breakfast television and slowly wake up to the events that have been happening in the world. Then they either climb into their cars, tune into a radio, and make their way to work. Others will get onto a train, or bus, and continue feeding their minds with more news from the national press. The first thing that they see everyday is politics, death and violence. How can this feed the Spirit and draw us closer to Nature? If you are one of these people, tomorrow try to avoid the TV. When you get up, look outside, beyond the other houses that surround you, and look to the sky. Really look into the clouds, or into the blue sky, look at the trees, or the birds. Go outside and feel the breeze on your skin. Even if it’s raining, put on a coat and step outside into your garden, or if you are in a flat, open a window and breath your first breath of real air consciously. By doing this simple act you can take yourself out of the mundane Human cycle, and be like any other animal that has woken up, and looks at their immediate surroundings. You are taking a very small step towards placing yourself back into the natural order of life, and building a relationship with the world.

Then, when you might normally get into your car and put in the radio, or step on the bus and read the paper, change your routine this morning. Keep the radio off, walk past the newsagents, and as you drive, or sit on the bus or train, take some time to really look at the world. You might drive through some countryside everyday, past some beautiful hills trees or fields. Depending on what time of year it is you’ll see a different scene for each season; bare trees and ploughed earth in winter, full green and growing crops in late spring and summer, beautiful colourings and harvested fields in late summer and autumn. This might all seem obvious to you, and I’m sure some of you do this everyday, but I do know Druids who still find it hard to include these simple practices into their lives, the rush of modern living just picks them up and drags them along, and before they know it the next festival has arrived and a whole season has past them by.

Modern Bardism is essentially an attitude, a way of looking at the world. The key to following the path of the Bard is learning to see the world through the eyes of a poet, this is Bardism’s greatest gift to us, and to do this we need to shift our relationship with the natural world, the result of which is the gradual re-enchantment of the landscape that surrounds us. By living consciously, by taking time each day to fed our relationship with the natural world, we are finding our way through the labyrinth to discover the magic and wonder that others rarely, if ever, see.

If we look back in history we will read a lot of texts about the education that these ancient poets went through. There are reams of Oghams, stories and poems to memorise, special poetic skills and meter to master, so how can I say that modern Bardism is simply an attitude? When looking at an ancient past, and ancient practices for spiritual purposes, it’s very important that we don’t get bogged down in dogma, that it is the Spirit of the teachings that reach us, and that we are inspired to explore the possibilities that lie within, rather than restrict ourselves with detail. The ancient Bards had very different problems in their lives, had advantages over us, and disadvantages to us. Their world would be almost unrecognisable if we were to go back in time and try to live amongst them. In the same way as the sections in the Bible’s Leviticus that say it’s ok to sell your daughter into slavery, or stone an adulterer are obviously teachings from a far harsher period of history, so we should take the things from any ancient teachings, and see how they relate to how we live our lives today, rather than trying to literally recreate something from the past and make it fit. What we need today is a way of opening up to creativity that frees us from our worry of judgement, our fear of failure, and encourages us to speak, write and sing with inspiration and openness. This will never flow freely if we are more concerned about historically accuracy than in the emotional and spiritual connection with Spirit. So ‘attitude’ is the key.

And that attitude is to see the magic that is already waiting to be discovered in our locality. Wherever we live there will be stories, about features of the landscape, about burial mounds, hillforts, caves, rivers, springs and valleys. For instance, in Sussex we have an Arthurian connection, even though it is one of the most unlikely places. Just outside Lewes is an iron age hillfort called Mount Caburn. All of the other forts on the South Downs are known by the name given them by the Anglo Saxons, but Mount Caburn is the only Sussex site that still retains its ‘Celtic’ name, Caburn’s root is Caer Bryn. It is known as a hollow hill, a hill of the Sidhe, and is said to contain a sleeping knight, buried in golden armour in a silver coffin. Caburn is also not too far removed from the other name by which Excalibur is known – Caliburn.

So stories are found within the landscape, and if we walk with clarity, and in full consciousness, she will tell us her stories. Before long you will hear the voices of the Fey as they watch you move through the trees, or sit beside the stream. Poetry, art, and music are rituals within themselves, if magic is as Crowley puts it ‘Change by the force of human will’, thoughts that become poetry, or inner vision that becomes a painting, really do change the world. I know this sounds like a New Age way of looking at things, but I guess we either believe that magic is difficult and requires a scientific approach and is the sole property of highly trained initiates, or we believe that it is a natural force accessible by anyone open enough to feel it. If this is the case then the poem, song or painting is the physical form of inspiration, of the world of Spirit made manifest in words or art. That the Bard who rests by a Barrow, opens to the Spirit of Place, and then is inspired to write is really connecting with the absolute building blocks of the Universe. By opening to inspiration, or Awen, we are directly communicating with the ancestors, with the Spirit of the Land, with the Elementals or with the Gods, and in the realm of Spirit where form is not linked by the rules of our human constructs, is there that much difference? I doubt it. And all of this is part of our natural environment, all of it is held within the green of a freshly opened leaf, or the movement of the field of corn, or the voice speaking within the sound of the waves as they wash our shores.

It says in one of the triads that the three essentials of genius are: an eye that can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and a boldness that dares follow it. I would say that these also speak of the Modern Bard, and it does take boldness to look at the world in a different way to society. However, if others could just let go of the fear of judgement, recognise that the Bardic symbol of the squared circle not only represents spirit and matter joined in balance, but also the open mouth of creative freedom. Society can place expectation and unspoken restraints on us when it comes to our creative expression, but the sacred expression of creativity, and of lying in the flowing stream of Awen, and listening to its words, knows no critique, for it is sacred, and of the Gods.