Personal: Queer Druidry
I’m a native Floridian. I will always consider myself a Florida Boy and will always love my swamps. I also grew up in the time before same-sex marriage equality, under the shadow of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, when the only thing a closeted teen like myself knew about being gay was violence and disease and isolation - because those were the only stories being told. That’s why what is currently happening in Florida is so deeply personal and deeply troubling for me.
For those who might not be aware the Florida legislature is advancing legislation that has come to be known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The Florida governor, arguably the inheritor of Trumpism, has signaled his intention to sign the bill when it makes it to his desk. You can read more about this bill here, here, and here. In brief, this bill would prohibit discussion of materials related to gender or sexuality in Florida classrooms. The existence and history of LGBTQ+ folks would be further criminalized and erased. LGBTQ+ youth would be reminded daily they exist in a system that finds them aberrant and dangerous. The children of LGBTQ+ parents would not be allowed to acknowledge their own families existence. This is a disgusting, cruel attack on an already marginalized and at-risk population. According to The Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely than their straight peers to seriously consider suicide, and seeing themselves reflected in the classroom reduces the chance of self-harm by over 20%.
I’ve spoken on my blog before about the parts of my craft that deal with Queer Ancestor veneration, working with Santa Muerte, and other things that could be considered hedge witchcraft. What I’ve not spoken much about before, however, is the more nature-based aspect of my spirituality. This is because I’ve struggled for a long time with feeling like this part of my practice was out of place or misaligned with everything else.
Several years ago I began the Bardic grade in the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. Over the course of two years - a lot of life happened and it took me a while to finish - I learned a lot about the fundamental tenets of Druidry with a focus on the creative, generative spirit present within all of us. I was surprised to see how much overlap there was between certain aspects of my personal practice with the type of Druidic philosophy espoused by OBOD. I’ve spent a lot of time since then examining my relationship to the nature-based part of my spirituality and the lingering feelings of discomfort surrounding it.
The discourse around the “Don’t Say Gay” bill finally helped shine a light on what I’ve been struggling with.
The message I had internalized while growing up was that being gay was “unnatural.” To be gay was to be an abomination, an aberration, something that ran counter to nature and the Divine plan. When I first began to realize I was gay I was terrified. I wanted so badly for it just to be a phase or confusion. In fact, the breaking point for me to ultimately begin the process of accepting who I am was a literal breakdown - meeting a guy in college and having the “oh fuck” moment of realizing I can’t run from this anymore, having a blackout panic attack, and attempting suicide. That is how hard I was socialized into thinking of being gay as a mistake or a mark of shame. It was the only message I was getting from the religious leaders around me, the media, the kids in my school, etc. And the absence of any positive representation or anything about the history of the LGBTQ+ community only added to the isolation of feeling like no one else had ever gone through this before and made it out alive.
(Left: The village of Pennal, Gwynedd, North Wales. St Tannwg and St Eithrias Church. Royal Chapel of the Prince Owain Glyndŵr.)
Over the last year I’ve come to realize my disconnect with the nature-centered parts of my spirituality and craft stems from the unresolved wounds from decades of being told that being LGBTQ+ is “unnatural.” No matter how many times folks would point out the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the natural world there would still be some wounded part of me, deeply buried, that was still isolated and afraid.
In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense why I was attracted to the image of the Green Man as a focal point for any nature-based work I pursued, from honoring the land and my little urban farm to creating a place to honor the spirits of nature. As a cis-gendered man the Green Man was offering me a way to see myself reflected as part of nature in a way that other popular spirits or deities I’d been exposed to could not.
I know many folks who, if they do anthropomorphize nature into an embodied spirit or deity, gravitate towards the “Mother Nature” approach. This could be through a female-oriented conception of Gaia, or through goddesses such as Demeter. These never “clicked” for me in the same way the Green Man did, and now I can see why.
I can’t say any of these realizations created immediate change, they did not. In many ways this introspective work reopened wounds I’d avoided or hadn’t known were there that required acknowledging and processing. In many ways reengaging with the nature-centered parts of my spirituality feels like a homecoming, although can you ever really come back to some place you can never leave? While my advocacy and activism around things like climate change, environmental health, and environmental racism have reinforced for me that humanity is not separate from nature I now feel like I’m finally beginning to see how I, as an individual person, am also not removed from these systems and never have been.
As a queer person, engaging in a Druidic practice has allowed me to challenge internalized homophobia and deep wounds in a spiritually meaningful way. Through cultivating a better relationship with the land, flora, and fauna around me I am also cultivating a better relationship with myself. Through understanding the interconnectedness of the natural systems that surround us I am better understanding the interconnectedness of the social systems we surround ourselves with. Through an exploration of the immanence of the magical and divine in the natural world I am better acquainting myself with the magical and divine within me. Through recognizing the divine within myself I see it infinitely manifested in the LGBTQ+ community as a vibrant, interwoven, and integral part of nature.
