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World Druidry: A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality
What does it mean to be a Druid, circa 2020 c.e.?
- What do modern-day Druids believe? - What are their religious practices? - How does Druidry vary with geography? - How has Druidry evolved over time? - What defines it as a religious tradition?
In the past, the answers to these questions have, of necessity, taken the form of educated guesses based on limited data, often biased by ease-of-contact, or Druidry group affiliation. The World Druidry Survey of 2018-2020 was the first, large-scale global effort to collect, interpret, and learn from the stories of all the practicing Druids of the world. The questionnaire included 189 items, organized into 42 sets of questions, including 18 open-ended essay questions. It probed into details of modern Druids' physical, social, and cultural environments; their ethnicities; their theological beliefs, ritual practices, and celebrated holidays; and the factors that influenced their development as Druids. Completed surveys were returned by 725 Druids, in six languages, from 34 nations, representing 147 Druid groups from around the world, in addition to 131 unaffiliated, solitary practitioners. Their responses included thousands of pages of rich, narrative data, allowing for the use of robust, mixed-methods analytic tools to paint a vivid picture of the contemporary religious tradition that is World Druidry.
Here are their stories.
- What do modern-day Druids believe? - What are their religious practices? - How does Druidry vary with geography? - How has Druidry evolved over time? - What defines it as a religious tradition?
In the past, the answers to these questions have, of necessity, taken the form of educated guesses based on limited data, often biased by ease-of-contact, or Druidry group affiliation. The World Druidry Survey of 2018-2020 was the first, large-scale global effort to collect, interpret, and learn from the stories of all the practicing Druids of the world. The questionnaire included 189 items, organized into 42 sets of questions, including 18 open-ended essay questions. It probed into details of modern Druids' physical, social, and cultural environments; their ethnicities; their theological beliefs, ritual practices, and celebrated holidays; and the factors that influenced their development as Druids. Completed surveys were returned by 725 Druids, in six languages, from 34 nations, representing 147 Druid groups from around the world, in addition to 131 unaffiliated, solitary practitioners. Their responses included thousands of pages of rich, narrative data, allowing for the use of robust, mixed-methods analytic tools to paint a vivid picture of the contemporary religious tradition that is World Druidry.
Here are their stories.
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 2021
8 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Larisa A. White
2 books6 followersLarisa A. White (née Larisa Naples) writes to celebrate Nature, to advocate ecological stewardship, and to explore the ways in which people relate - or fail to relate - across nations and cultures, landscapes and species. Her past projects have ranged from award-winning screenplays for animated films (
Bee Mine
/ Logline: Bee meets girl.), to original songs (
Spangle, Dangle, Glitter
/ a song of hope and magic for Yule), to acclaimed academic studies (
World Druidry
/ exploring how modern Druids relate to their local landscapes). At present, she is developing the eco-fantasy adventure series, Tales of the Primordial Mountain.
Larisa currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she spends her free time with her husband and son, building wildlife habitats, and restoring native ecosystems on lands once lovingly tended by the Ramaytush Ohlone.
Larisa currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she spends her free time with her husband and son, building wildlife habitats, and restoring native ecosystems on lands once lovingly tended by the Ramaytush Ohlone.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 10, 2021
If you’ve ever wondered what modern Druids believe and what they get up to inspired by their beliefs, then this book is a must for you. It had already created quite a buzz in the Druid community prior to its publication and it not only lives up to expectations but exceeds them. Here I must declare an interest, having been a Druid since 1974, founded the British Druid Order, having many friends in other Druid groups and having worked full-time as a Druid since 1995. This makes me an ideal market for the book, but you don’t need a similar level of commitment to enjoy it. Indeed, anyone with an interest in modern Druidry, Paganism or what academics sometimes call ‘New Religious Movements’ will find it a fascinating and incredibly rich source of detailed, well-researched information. Nothing like it has been attempted before and it will undoubtedly stand as a definitive work for years to come, informing current researchers and hopefully inspiring further research on its subject as well as providing unprecedented insights for the general reader.
It draws on a world survey of Druids conducted by the author over a two-year period. The questionnaire (still available online) is very well constructed, consisting of 189 separate items, allowing respondents to expand on their answers and providing 18 open-ended questions specifically aimed at encouraging longer responses. The fact that the author is a Druid herself encouraged Druid groups to promote the survey online, resulting in 725 respondents from 34 countries returning completed forms, providing detailed insights into all aspects of modern Druidry. White carefully analysed this mass of information, breaking down the results into the book’s eight chapters. These cover Druidry as a personal path, how Druids interact with the world, Druid theology, ritual, meditation, seasonal festivals, etc. In short, all of present-day Druidical life is here, all illustrated with relevant quotes from practising Druids. The sheer quantity of information is astonishing and the author has done a remarkable job in breaking it down into accessible chunks. Whenever the data looks like becoming too complex for words alone, she provides clear, informative bar or pie charts to make it clear.
Having been involved in Druidry for nearly half a century, you’d think there wouldn’t be much I didn’t know about it. You’d be wrong. While the book supports much that I already knew or suspected, either anecdotally or from personal observation, it also contains several surprises, some welcome, others less so. In the latter category, I was shocked to learn the extent to which modern Druids are actively persecuted, primarily by Christians. I genuinely thought we had progressed beyond the kind of medieval thinking that prompts such persecution, yet some Druids, particularly in the USA, still fear to ‘come out’ about their beliefs, even to members of their own families. Globally, the survey reveals that 19% fear discrimination, 17% fear harassment and 8% fear physical assault. These numbers are significantly higher in the USA.
A more welcome finding is the extent to which Nature plays a part in modern Druidry. Those of us who run Druid groups are always banging on about communing with the natural world and its indwelling spirits, but it’s hard to know to what extent the message actually gets through. At least, it was until this book arrived. When asked to rank the importance of different influences on their spirituality, 91% put Nature at the top of the list, 71% Nature spirits. Yay! It’s working! Clearly Druidry warrants its description as a ‘Nature Spirituality’ in the book’s subtitle. 85% of Druids, for example, report being actively engaged in some form of environmental stewardship.
Having spent the last 15 years creating distance learning courses for the BDO, I was also pleased to find Druid courses cited as a major influence by around half of Druids worldwide. That said, another surprise was how many Druids practice their path alone or with a partner, rarely if ever engaging with group celebrations.
As a ‘hard polytheist,’ defined by the author as one who sees their gods as “objectively real,” I was intrigued to find that this belief is shared by only 15% of respondents, while 49% identify as ‘soft polytheists,’ i.e. those who “typically work with their pantheons in a symbolic manner,” and 37% as ‘pantheists,’ regarding “all of Nature [as], in essence, a single, divine consciousness.” The sheer variety of belief revealed in the survey is remarkable. By contrast, chapter 8 is devoted to “Druidry’s Spiritual Common Core.” This finds a shared set of core beliefs that define modern Druidry. Again, engagement with the natural world features prominently.
At the end of the book, the author provides a useful and admirably clear Glossary offering succinct definitions of terms used in the text, including deities from numerous pantheons, folk and seasonal festivals engaged in by Druids, and terms such as ‘animism,’ ‘awen’ and ‘imbas.’ The survey form is included as an Appendix while another lists 147 Druid groups worldwide.
A final thing to commend the book is simply its look and feel. The hardback is a thing of genuine beauty. The attractive, dark blue dust jacket is printed on a high quality paper that feels like velvet while the book inside is fully cloth-bound in a matching shade of blue. It’s a joy to handle, the text clear and readable, the photographs well-chosen and clearly reproduced.
In bringing together such a wealth of information and presenting it with such crystal clarity, Larisa A. White has done a great service to the Druid community, the broader Pagan community, those interested in ‘New Religious Movements’ and general readers with an interest in contemporary spirituality more broadly and with how spirituality impacts on environmental concerns. I therefore wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend this unique and fascinating book.
It draws on a world survey of Druids conducted by the author over a two-year period. The questionnaire (still available online) is very well constructed, consisting of 189 separate items, allowing respondents to expand on their answers and providing 18 open-ended questions specifically aimed at encouraging longer responses. The fact that the author is a Druid herself encouraged Druid groups to promote the survey online, resulting in 725 respondents from 34 countries returning completed forms, providing detailed insights into all aspects of modern Druidry. White carefully analysed this mass of information, breaking down the results into the book’s eight chapters. These cover Druidry as a personal path, how Druids interact with the world, Druid theology, ritual, meditation, seasonal festivals, etc. In short, all of present-day Druidical life is here, all illustrated with relevant quotes from practising Druids. The sheer quantity of information is astonishing and the author has done a remarkable job in breaking it down into accessible chunks. Whenever the data looks like becoming too complex for words alone, she provides clear, informative bar or pie charts to make it clear.
Having been involved in Druidry for nearly half a century, you’d think there wouldn’t be much I didn’t know about it. You’d be wrong. While the book supports much that I already knew or suspected, either anecdotally or from personal observation, it also contains several surprises, some welcome, others less so. In the latter category, I was shocked to learn the extent to which modern Druids are actively persecuted, primarily by Christians. I genuinely thought we had progressed beyond the kind of medieval thinking that prompts such persecution, yet some Druids, particularly in the USA, still fear to ‘come out’ about their beliefs, even to members of their own families. Globally, the survey reveals that 19% fear discrimination, 17% fear harassment and 8% fear physical assault. These numbers are significantly higher in the USA.
A more welcome finding is the extent to which Nature plays a part in modern Druidry. Those of us who run Druid groups are always banging on about communing with the natural world and its indwelling spirits, but it’s hard to know to what extent the message actually gets through. At least, it was until this book arrived. When asked to rank the importance of different influences on their spirituality, 91% put Nature at the top of the list, 71% Nature spirits. Yay! It’s working! Clearly Druidry warrants its description as a ‘Nature Spirituality’ in the book’s subtitle. 85% of Druids, for example, report being actively engaged in some form of environmental stewardship.
Having spent the last 15 years creating distance learning courses for the BDO, I was also pleased to find Druid courses cited as a major influence by around half of Druids worldwide. That said, another surprise was how many Druids practice their path alone or with a partner, rarely if ever engaging with group celebrations.
As a ‘hard polytheist,’ defined by the author as one who sees their gods as “objectively real,” I was intrigued to find that this belief is shared by only 15% of respondents, while 49% identify as ‘soft polytheists,’ i.e. those who “typically work with their pantheons in a symbolic manner,” and 37% as ‘pantheists,’ regarding “all of Nature [as], in essence, a single, divine consciousness.” The sheer variety of belief revealed in the survey is remarkable. By contrast, chapter 8 is devoted to “Druidry’s Spiritual Common Core.” This finds a shared set of core beliefs that define modern Druidry. Again, engagement with the natural world features prominently.
At the end of the book, the author provides a useful and admirably clear Glossary offering succinct definitions of terms used in the text, including deities from numerous pantheons, folk and seasonal festivals engaged in by Druids, and terms such as ‘animism,’ ‘awen’ and ‘imbas.’ The survey form is included as an Appendix while another lists 147 Druid groups worldwide.
A final thing to commend the book is simply its look and feel. The hardback is a thing of genuine beauty. The attractive, dark blue dust jacket is printed on a high quality paper that feels like velvet while the book inside is fully cloth-bound in a matching shade of blue. It’s a joy to handle, the text clear and readable, the photographs well-chosen and clearly reproduced.
In bringing together such a wealth of information and presenting it with such crystal clarity, Larisa A. White has done a great service to the Druid community, the broader Pagan community, those interested in ‘New Religious Movements’ and general readers with an interest in contemporary spirituality more broadly and with how spirituality impacts on environmental concerns. I therefore wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend this unique and fascinating book.
August 22, 2022
World Druidry details the results of the World Druidry Survey conducted by the author in 2018-2020. It represents the responses of 725 Druids from 34 different countries, both solitaries and members of (sometimes multiple) orders and groups, and covers themes including how druids in different climates and ecosystems celebrate solstices and equinoxes, the wide range of theological frameworks Druids embrace, the main influences on druids' paths (ex. books, curricula, time in nature), and more. White clearly explains the responses druids offered to the many survey questions, noting variations along lines like order membership, time spent on a druid path, and geographical location. She addresses the difficulty of defining 'druid' and presents common threads in world druidry without oversimplifying or reducing druidry's diversity. White also clearly explains her methodology and methods in comprehensible terms (even for me, someone who has never completed any kind of quantitative research) and situates her study in relation to the existing research published on Druidry and on contemporary druids. As a Druid, I was fascinated to learn about what the World Druidry Survey determined characterized the order I belong to, and I even found some new ideas for my practice in the words of other druids from around the world. I highly recommend this book not only to Druids ourselves, but to anyone interested in what Druidry looks like today.
Read
April 19, 2023I have it on my bookshelf, and I refer to it frequently because the information it contains cannot be found anywhere else. However, I also wrote it, so I will leave the task of reviewing it to others.
August 12, 2022
This book is incredibly informative. I found it really refreshing and eye opening. Drudry is not a one size fits all which is why it's so wonderful. If we really think about it- if Druidry had continued to thrive, people would have eventually explored the Earth to continue to understand it and to honor it and I cannot help but think their practices would have evolved accordingly to be in line with nature not within specific dates. Specific dates defeat the entire foundation of Druidry in my opinion. Knowing that I am not alone in that thinking really opened up some opportunities for me to consider becoming part of a wider Druid community. Cannot recommend this book enough.
September 15, 2021
It's Brilliant!
Most books on modern druidry have an overview of history, followed by a few interviews with leaders or members of prominent groups. This has the tendency to place organizations at the center of druidry. The truth is far more complex and interesting.
This book details modern, emerging druidries. The data for this book was obtained through a questionnaire and essay form, using terminology for the questions designed within the druid community in consultation with the author. A sampling of the seven hundred plus essays and long form answers illustrate the binding threads, regional and personal differences that comprise this dynamic community.
The author teases out a Common Core druidry from this rich data set, explaining her methodology and demonstrating that druids comprise a spiritual tradition with identifiable elements that are consistent across multiple continents and demographic groups.
I've noted that the book has both statistical analysis and extensive quotations from druids. The third and possibly most valuable insights provided may come from using this methodology to compassionately and accurately describe other communities that do not conform to mainstream social categories or expected norms of identity formation. Another likely audience would be chaplains who need to serve Neo Pagans or druids.
(Disclaimer: I know the author, and was one of the informants)
Most books on modern druidry have an overview of history, followed by a few interviews with leaders or members of prominent groups. This has the tendency to place organizations at the center of druidry. The truth is far more complex and interesting.
This book details modern, emerging druidries. The data for this book was obtained through a questionnaire and essay form, using terminology for the questions designed within the druid community in consultation with the author. A sampling of the seven hundred plus essays and long form answers illustrate the binding threads, regional and personal differences that comprise this dynamic community.
The author teases out a Common Core druidry from this rich data set, explaining her methodology and demonstrating that druids comprise a spiritual tradition with identifiable elements that are consistent across multiple continents and demographic groups.
I've noted that the book has both statistical analysis and extensive quotations from druids. The third and possibly most valuable insights provided may come from using this methodology to compassionately and accurately describe other communities that do not conform to mainstream social categories or expected norms of identity formation. Another likely audience would be chaplains who need to serve Neo Pagans or druids.
(Disclaimer: I know the author, and was one of the informants)
June 10, 2021
this is an extremely comprehensive survey of some several hundred druids which reveals some insights which are not readily available in any previous publication; the survey covers contemporary druidry, most previous books are spiritual or historical with modern druidry being a large gap within that area. doctor larisa white has quite carefully filled in this lack in spiritual knowledge in a way not attempted before by any previous author. the result is extremely enlightening, and insightful. thanks to detailed reader comments and results some interesting data has been uncovered which will provide much food for thought. rather than history we get to see what a modern druid may do. environment for example plays a large factor within modern druidic practice. also relevant are deity and whether or not to come out to the wider public. certainly the druids approached practice a wide range of beliefs and activities, druidry is far from monolithic and there are so many different ways and approaches.
Read
July 21, 2021For all those interested in getting beyond the mere popular stereotypes and limited media representations, this impressively researched book will prove invaluable.
It is informative both for the practising Druid and the simply curious and is written in an engaging and readily accessible style; all in all an inspirational work.
It is informative both for the practising Druid and the simply curious and is written in an engaging and readily accessible style; all in all an inspirational work.
October 22, 2023
"World Druidry: A Globalizing Path of Nature Spirituality," by Larisa A. White is a comprehensive look into Druidry today. White did a wonderful job of putting together all of this information about the modern Druid movement. There are a lot of statistics, but there are a lot of interviews and answers to questions that people may have about Druidry. As someone who had never heard of Druids outside of historical context until just a few years ago, I can say this book was a godsend in answering questions that I had. It is nice to know that I am not alone in my views.
I highly recommend anyone who has even a passing fancy to learn about modern Druidry, or even interested in other religious theologies beyond the major world religions, to read this book. It isn't a book that is only for those who want to be Druids or are interested in what Druidry is, but for anyone who is curious as to what else is out there, that isn't a major religion on the planet. White has done an amazing job of showing Druidry from all parts of the world, their differences as well as the common threads that bind us all. It's an academic book, spiritual book, and religious book all wrapped up into one. If you are a Druid, then this is a definite "must read" for you and an excellent book to give to others that you love to get them to understand a bit more about who you are and what Druidry is to you and others.
I highly recommend anyone who has even a passing fancy to learn about modern Druidry, or even interested in other religious theologies beyond the major world religions, to read this book. It isn't a book that is only for those who want to be Druids or are interested in what Druidry is, but for anyone who is curious as to what else is out there, that isn't a major religion on the planet. White has done an amazing job of showing Druidry from all parts of the world, their differences as well as the common threads that bind us all. It's an academic book, spiritual book, and religious book all wrapped up into one. If you are a Druid, then this is a definite "must read" for you and an excellent book to give to others that you love to get them to understand a bit more about who you are and what Druidry is to you and others.
October 7, 2025
Absolutely phenomenal - both the data and Larisa's analysis!
Larisa asked "what does it mean to be a druid?", and over 700 druids from around the world answered.
If you want to know what modern druidry looks like, I cannot recommend this highly enough!
Larisa asked "what does it mean to be a druid?", and over 700 druids from around the world answered.
If you want to know what modern druidry looks like, I cannot recommend this highly enough!
July 7, 2021
Amazing and professional summary of the world druidry survey!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews