A Spirit of Place

I met an old spirit friend the other day. I was visiting my parents on the Northern Beaches, where I grew up, and where I wrote the book Australian Druidry, and we decided to take a day to go for a walk out in Guringai National Park at West Head. As we drove there, along the road lined with thick bush, that skirts along the top of the West Head peninsula, past beautiful hilltops and sacred carving sites. I got a familiar feeling and was flooded with memories of the time when I had just gotten home to Australia after living in Britain for nearly a year back in 2008.

I remembered a ritual we did at a waterfall shortly afterwards, where we worked with the elements and meditated on becoming one with the land through sitting under the waterfall. I remembered another day, walking with my mother in misty drizzling rain, looking out from one of the hilltops over the deep green hills covered with casuarina scrub and gum forest, and feeling this place was so full of wild beauty.

I remembered being in these places with the promise I’d made at Stonehenge a few weeks before ringing in my head. At the Gorsedd there I had stepped forward and thanked the community for what I’d learned about Druidry and the Gorsedd, and vowed I’d take it back to Australia and share it with others, which I have been doing now for the last fifteen years.

Standing on that hill back then I had felt deeply welcomed by the spirits of place who wanted me to do that too. The feeling was of love and encouragement, and this vivid dream of what Australian Druidry could be, if we began to open our eyes more to the beauty of the world around us right here. Not always dreaming of another land, but seeing magic right here in the gum trees and sandstone cliffs, the summer rain, the waterfalls and call of the kookaburra.

That spirit is a feeling, a state of mind, a calling. It is a spirit that I know so deeply; that touched my heart; and when I felt its presence again on Saturday just passed, I felt like I was meeting an old friend. I was reminded of how far I’d come, how much work I had done, and felt a sense of pride and achievement. As though this spirit knew I had achieved what I had set out to achieve and it was smiling along with me with gratitude. That the wish in my heart that day, years ago, had come to fruition.

But it also encouraged me to continue to seek more. To strive further. It was almost like a realignment of my purpose, the spirit standing there, pointing into the distance of what could be achieved. As though the spirit’s work was to keep me on track, on that path towards the vision of Australian Druidry. It’s something so vivid to me, yet so intangible, it’s almost like a fragrance. When I feel it, I’m overcome with inspiration to follow the path further. It brings me great joy and uplifts my heart.

I have also recently taken the first footsteps into the OBOD grade of the Druid. Fourteen years after I began my Bardic grade. I have not yet received my course materials, and so I wait in that limbo phase between Ovate and Druid, wondering what the Druid grade will bring. For now, I am content with feeling a great deal of joy at knowing I have gotten this far. I am pleased with what I’ve achieved. And I’m excited by meeting this spirit of my path again. The movement into the Druid grade feels like a part of what that spirit is personifying. And the last time we met I would have been close to the beginnings of my work in the Bardic grade.

Somehow, this spirit is my connection with that place, my goals and dreams, that vision of Australian Druidry, and my path of study and learning personified. Perhaps they are all of these things? What I know is when I meet them, I feel more sure of my path and my direction; I feel a great deal of inspiration for following that path, and for being a part of the community that joins me there.

I want to share the feeling with you, so here I’ve shared some photographs from our walk. A beautiful place. There are huge trees – angophoras, swamp mahogany and scribbly gum; flowering boronias, beautiful grass trees, a raven in a banksia tree, and a magpie on the path. The feeling wells up inside me in my heart, like a fullness. Like love. I breathe deeply and the air is clean and fresh. The breeze is warm despite it being a winter day. There is a depth of quiet that lets you hear your own mind so much so that it quietens to listen. The sandstone boulders welcome you to sit and take it all in. And you know that if you do, the spirit will be there, waiting for you, to show you the way.  

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This blog post was written about a place in Guringai Country in what is also known as Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I pay my respects to the Guringai people, and to the Elders past and present and to the many First Nations people who make Guringai country their home today. I am deeply saddened by the tragedies of loss that the Guringai people experienced as a result of European settlement and that their presence was not a direct part of my growing up in this place. I am however, grateful that some people of that place have been able to continue their culture today and are rebuilding their strong connections to places like this. I hope for their continued strength for the heritage of culture that places like West Head hold for us all and for future generations.

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