Guest Blog from Luke Eastwood - author of The Druid Garden

I have written only a few blog post over the years, as I am not in the habit of doing it; although I suppose I would regard it as a bit like a one-way conversation, in which I need to anticipate what you might want or need to hear from me.

My new book “The Druid Garden” is written very much with two main groups in mind – the Pagan and wider spiritual community and Gardeners, with the intention of bringing the two together like on some kind of mental venn diagram.  If you can change how you think about something, it changes how you will behave, so very much the book begins with trying to change perceptions.

Gardening is something that has been happening forever, but only more recently has it become connected with the subject of ethics and understanding of how food, medicine, how we treat nature and each other are all linked with something that has generally been regarded as a hobby.

For the gardening hobbiest this book might help them to look at the world with fresh eyes and discover a different side to the physical world of nature – at least I am hoping that readers will take from this a more holistic and spiritually minded attitude towards their gardens and the wider environment.

Certainly, for a blog connected with Witchcraft, I don’t need to lecture you with information about the existence of spirit or the importance of herbs and what to use them for. There is a lot information in the book about uses of trees and plants on a magical and medicinal uses, but more importantly I have written about how to grow them and how to look after them. Another area I have looked at is how to connect and  establish a working relationship with plants or their essence.

Gardening may come naturally to some Witches and Pagans, certainly for myself I just seemed to fall into it, and I do have ‘green fingers’ without fully comprehending how I acquired them. However, I realise that this is not the case with some people – others are attuned to humans, animals, the deceased, spirits etc far more than to plants and very few people have a very strong connection to everything in existence. Just as some many need help in learning to connect to the world of spirit, some others need help in connecting to the plant realm – and this is for whom I wrote this book.

We live in complex and challenging times, the Earth itself is threatened by our very existence due to our insane industrialised mode of living.  Many areas of the established norms are being shaken and perhaps will be overturned in the near future. So, I would consider now to be a time for action, a time for stepping up to ‘be the change’ if we want to be part of creating a better world together. This can be done on many levels – through magic, art, personal interaction, prayer and also through practical actions such as political activism, helping someone in need, planting trees and sowing seeds.

In fact sowing seeds is a great metaphor for what lies ahead, I think. We do not know what the result of our actions will be, in fact we may not be around to see our deeds bear fruit in our own lifetime, just as an oak tree will mature long after we have planted an acorn. However, that does not really matter -if what we do now ultimately serves to make the world a better place then surely that is enough in itself?

Luke is a Druid, living and working as a horticulturist in Ireland. He has written several books spirtuality, environmentalism and poetry. His latest book is “The Druid Garden” published by Moon Books. You can see more of Luke’s work at lukeeastwood.com