The Role of Druid Spirituality in the Climate Crisis

Tuesday, 12th July, 2022
Conference Paper, Presented
Chichester University Research Confrence
Written and Presented by Andrew Martin Lee

This presentation will explore the mythology of the ecologically centered spirituality of Druidry and its practical application in developing the world beyond the climate crisis. It will begin by exploring our current culture, which Alan Moore describes as the ‘Culture of Steam’. (Moore in VyLenz, 2003) Drawing from Buckminster Fuller’s ‘knowledge doubling curve’ (1981) it will present a case that our current media landscape of continuous content creation has created a landscape in which more people than ever experience information overload, preventing them from fighting the climate crisis in any meaningful way. In computing, information overload is explained as the input exceeding the processing capacity (Speier et al, 1999), and as our lives are ever more interconnected with computers and the internet, we are experiencing too much input.

When we reach a point where we are no longer able to meet the demands of rare materials required by our current modes of information storage, we will reach a form of apocalypse. As Campagna explains ‘Once the digital and paper records of our culture will have vanished, very little will remain to contradict any alternative, invented versions of this time segment. The looming end of the future endows the inhabitants of Westernized Modernity with a unique chance to lie.’ (Campagna, 2021: 64)

How then can the mythology of a seasonal worshipping belief system be used to create the foundations of a society that exists beyond the climate crisis, in a world that no longer experiences seasons, but only extremes of weather? As an oral tradition, Druidry avoids the need for rare earth metals to store knowledge, using only the human resource. Employing Carl Jung’s notions of the ineffective nature of dead myth this presentation will set out a methodology for myth creation that works to establish a new way of being for the post-climate world.

It will detail the practice-as-research process of entering into a state of ‘intellectual sympathy’ (Bergson, 1909) with the belief system of the Druids, specifically the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, from whose practical course of learning this research is centered. This presentation will engage with modes of practice-as-research in presenting this research in formal spoken presentation and performative modes to best articulate this performance-based research.