OBOD

(Image : “LOTR Fanbook-The Shire”, SG, 2010)

OBOD  (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK) is structured in three “grades”, which constitute the essential Training the Order has to offer. All three grades are complete in themselves, so you go in until you feel that you´ve had enough. I would certainly encourage all Members to go through the whole cycle of the three grades, because it´s getting out of the last one as a Druid, that you really get the feeling that…”Now, to begin again! Really do it, this time!” It is the paradox : the Course is a Circle, not a never-ending journey!…Each time you complete the circle (in the next twenty years or so, lol), you will feel more complete: the Journey of a Druid never ends…

Difficulties are obstacles to transcend to be able to go beyond limits (mostly self imposed!), and grow as a person. Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White becomes…Gandalf!

I have finished the Course, and so, am a Druid “grad” of OBOD. As such, and knowing the Course well for having gone through it all, in much detail, I can help Bards (art,storytelling, writing, etc.), Ovates (ecopsychology, Journey in the Forest) and Druids (psychosynthesis, Pathworking, and other stuff). This is also what we, as a Grove, have to offer.

The two other components of the “Lothlorien-Nemeton Grove”, Mika (my daughter), and Adam Brough (my daughter´s soulmate) are also experiencing the OBOD Course. Mika is at the gate of her graduation as a Druid, and Adam at the gate of the Druid grade. We think that by 2011, we will be three OBOD Druid grads, working together, both in the context of a Grove (the Lothlorien Nemeton), and the context of SYNERGY (I am a PS grad, and Mika as well; Adam is still studying the Will Parfitt Course (for SYNERGY, please click one of the Pages next to the title of the blog, and for Will Parfitt, please see right-hand blogroll).

All three of us, working as a “triad” or “triangle”- are clear about the function(s) of the Earth Sanctuary, as indicated in the Pages above.

Our main task on the physical level is to maintain this place, which the group that is behind the scene (working with me in the context of SYNERGY) has now bought. It certainly makes a difference in the general feeling about being “Gaian Druids” to know that you are the guardian of a land that actually belongs to you. As my daughter once said “You cannot breathe imaginary trees”, and she was so right, the Druid Journey has certainly to be translated to physical reality. That was our main effort this last decade: beginning with our (holy) roots, going through the hard process of owning the land we stand on.