Latest Event Updates
We are Wight Druids
THE Isle of Wight is a small but beautiful and sunny Island just off the south coast of England where the ancestral torch has been re-kindled after many hundreds of years so its inhabitants may once again celebrate the turning of the wheel of the year in harmony with their roots and with their natural surroundings.
Wight Druids, or the Grove of Ynys Wyth, was established at Midsummer 2004 to celebrate the eight Druid festivals at the key nodal points of each year in open rite and to provide a nurturing ‘home’ for all those in search of their true inner selves, their wellspring of inspiration.
All are welcome who approach with an open heart and mind, and embrace the spirit of mutual respect that is central to the Wight Druids ethic.
May your spiritual journeying be Blessed. /|\
September 2012 Moot
The September, 2012, moot will be held on Thursday, September 13, at The Castle Inn, High Street, Newport. Great atmosphere, real ale, excellent food in Newport’s oldest pub … and all the spirit presences you can sense!
Do come and join us.
BB /|\
* Meanwhile, if you’re heading for this year’s Bestival, you will be welcome to join in Wight Druids’ opening ceremony on Thursday, September 6. If you would like more info, get in touch via pfwightrc@gmail.com
September moot
The September, 2012, moot will be held on Thursday, September 13, at The Castle Inn, High Street, Newport. Great atmosphere, real ale, excellent food in Newport’s oldest pub … and all the spirit presences you can sense!
Do come and join us.
BB /|\
* Meanwhile, if you’re heading for this year’s Bestival, you will be welcome to join in Wight Druids’ opening ceremony on Thursday, September 6. If you would like more info, get in touch via pfwightrc@gmail.com
MOOT
MERRY MOOT AGAIN MERRY MOOTERS
THURSDAY 10TH NOVEMBER AT THE 8 BELLS CARISBROOKE
FROM 8PM ONWARDS. ALL ARE WELCOME
Winds of change
VISITORS to this blog – and to our long-running website at http://www.wightdruids.co.uk – might already have noticed a fairly radical change.
For a little while now, we have been working on a completely new kind of website to combine all the old ‘static’ site offered with some new interactive features to give Grove members and friends some fresh options for showcasing their own work and sharing inspiration – or just a bit of chat – directly on the site.
In particular, the Eisteddfod section has been opened out to give more space for offerings of pictures, videos, poetry and more.
But we have also now added a built-in blog, a forum for exchanging ideas and a ‘Shoutbox’ for more direct chat, among the raft of new features.
Although still under constant development, we are now consolidating the new site as our main online presence and as a result, have suspended the original wightdruids.co.uk site, with traffic automatically redirected to our new ‘home’ on the web.
We do hope you will come on over and join us.
Bendithion Llawen/|\Bright Blessings
Alban Hefin – Summer Solstice, 2010
IT IS planned to offer an open public midsummer celebration at The Longstone, Mottistone, from around noon on Monday, June 21, 2010.
As ever, all are welcome who approach in the spirit of mutual respect that is the Druid ethic.
Bendithion Llawen/|\Bright Blessings
Scribe
Changing places on the web
As many of you will know, no sooner had we launched the new and instantly popular Wight Druids Network website than Ning – the social networking platform on which it was built – announced it was withdrawing its free services, profoundly irritating for a vast number of people who had put countless hours into building some good interactive sites this way.
Feeling rather unhappy at the ethics of this sudden move, we decided to develop a new version through another provider, and this is now up and running at http://wightdruids.spruz.com/.
If you haven’t come over and joined us so far, please do so as soon as you can. There is now a ‘button’ link on the front page of the Ning site that allows you to jump straight into the new site without having to fill in most of your details again.
Meanwhile, a longer-term aim is to completely redevelop the main Wight Druids website, making it much wider-ranging and far more interactive, as well as making it simpler for anyone signing up for the free membership to add their own content. This work is just getting under way now on our new server space at http://wightdruids.com. You can visit this embryonic site now if you’d like to see how we’re getting on with this and keep an eye on the construction work as it progresses. It’s already even possible to register as a member of the site, although content is still sparse at the moment.
As ever, we would welcome your comments on either or both of the new sites.
Bendithion Llawen/|\Bright Blessings
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Druid
Wight Druids go interactive!
For those who don’t yet know, we have now opened up a new website at http://wightdruids.ning.com/ where we are all able to interact with each other, post photos, videos, music and even chat instantly with any Grove friends who are online.
The idea is to allow all Grove members and friends to be able to share inspiration more readily and to be able to keep you all in touch with what’s happening in and around the Grove of Ynys Weith.
If you haven’t yet had an invitation to join (via the Ning network) and would like one, please drop me a quick e-mail.
If you have received an invitation but haven’t yet joined in, please do. It’s free and there’s absolutely no obligation to say or do anything, unless you really do want to share. We’d love to welcome you here.
Bendithion
MnM/|\
Honouring the Ancient Dead
My teacher, Emma Restall Orr, recently appeared on BBC’s Newsnight in an item about the reburial of ancient pre-christian remains, which is a cause she is closely involved in through her campaign group, Honouring the Ancient Dead.
If you have a few moments, you might well find it worthwhile to take a look at the item through the BBC’s online iPlayer at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r2b3f/Newsnight_22_02_2010/
The item in question comes up around 36 mins into the programme.
Emma is, as many of you will already know, the author of A Perennial Course in Living Druidry, as well as founder of The Druid Network and co-founder of the British Druid Order, and has written many books on Druidry and paganism, including the superb Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics.
/|\
Also well worth a look, while you’re in iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r3rzv/Countryfile_21_02_2010/
There’s a nice piece about the Marsden Imbolc celebrations around 26min 30sec into the programme (preceded, incidentally, by an interesting seg on the Cheddar whitebeam).
Imbolc
Wight Druids are to offer open public pagan ritual to celebrate the festival of Imbolc – the First of Spring – at The Longstone, Mottistone, from around noon on Sunday, January 31.
This is notoriously the coldest of the eight festivals outdoors and, while we do not currently expect conditions to be as horribly bitter as some of you hardy folk will remember from last year, we would still advise you to dress warmly, as well as comfortably.
We do hope you will be able to join us to offer a big, warming pagan welcome to our primary goddess, Bridget (Bree), at the first signs of her spring awakening in the land.
Bendithion/Blessings
of Imbolc’s first stirrings of the rebirth
/|\
