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NOD Latest News

Vacation

Due to vacation, the webmaster and membership administration departments will not be available until July 24. Any questions sent to these departments will be handled afterwards.

Thank you for your understanding and have a great Summer!

Druid Youth Course now available in Dutch!

We are happy to announce that the Druid Youth Course is now also available in Dutch. This course follows the Bardic Youth Course and Ovate Youth Course, which have already been available in Dutch. Students need to have completed these two courses before they can enrol into the Druid Youth Course.

At this moment, the Dutch Druid Youth Course does not have a mentor available yet, as there are no graduates of the Dutch Ovate Youth Course at this point. However, the course book can already be purchased from our online bookstore at this link:

https://www.lulu.com/shop/new-order-of-druids/de-wortels-van-het-woud/paperback/product-4pe7jg.html?page=1&pageSize=4 

With thanks to Ben (Ontwaken) for the Dutch translations.

Vacation

Due to vacation, the webmaster and membership administration departments will not be available until July 25. Any questions sent to these departments will be handled afterwards.

Thank you for your understanding and have a great Summer!

 

Vacation

The membership administration and webmaster department will be on vacation until July 20, 2021. Support tickets and other inquiries may not be answered until after July 20. 

Thank you for your understanding.

New self-study Meditation Course

We are happy to announce that we have launched a new self-study Meditation Course. The course does not come with mentoring, but is free for all members of NOD. Its main purpose is to help students of other courses with their meditation practice, but you can also take this course if you're not enrolled in any other courses.

The Meditations Course is a practical journaling course involving meditations and visualisations which are intended to demonstrate your own personal growth in this aspect of personal practice. The course provides 39 meditations and journaling exercises to be performed over a period of 13 months. By keeping a journal you will be able to look back on your entries and see the progress you make and this will aid in your future development.

You can find the Meditation Course here:

https://www.druidcircle.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=24

 

Oran Mor Celtic E-Zine now available for all members

In 2006, we introduced the "Oran Mor", the quarterly Celtic E-Zine of the New Order of Druids. It was introduced as a service for upgraded members, and each edition contains a variety of articles, including NOD news, seasonal-related articles, book reviews, stories, artwork, poetry, and much more.

In order to improve communications with NOD and its members, the Council has decided to make the Oran Mor e-zine open to all members of NOD, and no longer just the upgraded ones. This means that, as of today, you can download the latest edition of our e-zine every time it comes out, as well as every previous edition published between 2006 and now. Many hours of reading enjoyment guaranteed!

What do you need to do to access the Oran Mor?
All you need is to be a member of NOD with a registered account on our website. It doesn't matter if you're a free member or an upgraded member.

Once you've logged in, go to "My Services" and then to "Oran Mor E-Zine". Then you just click the "download" button, which will bring you to the list of all editions of our e-zine. The most recent edition is on top. 

You can also just go to this link directly (after you're logged in) and then to "download":
https://www.druidcircle.org/druid/index.php/en/services/oran-mor

We will still send an e-mail to our NODNews mailing list every time a new edition of the Oran Mor is released (4 times a year), so you'll know the newest edition is ready for you to read whenever you wish!

Our e-zine is published in PDF-format. This means that, just like the handbook courses of our online Druid college, you'll need a PDF reader installed on your computer or device in order to open it and read the Oran Mor. Acrobat Reader is most commonly used, and is a completely free program, though other PDF readers exist as well.


New Vernemeton and Spanish version of the website

We are happy to announce that, as of August 3, the New Order of Druids has expanded its borders with a new vernemeton (local grove) in Spain.

We welcome Nemeton Keltoi, located in Barcelona, in our international community! If you live in Spain or are interested to find out more about Nemeton Keltoi, please check out their website and social media for more information:

Website: https://keltoi.morganabarcelona.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APIKeltoi.GroveNemetonKeltoi/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apikeltoi_grovenemetonkeltoi/


In addition, we would also like to announce that the international website of the New Order of Druids is now also partially available in Spanish. This means that the basic functionality is now available in the Spanish language, which you can access by clicking the Spanish flag icon at the top of the page (or use the language selector in the left menu when you use the mobile version of the website).

Keep in mind that not the entire website is available in the Spanish language. Content and information articles, news announcements, courses and support communications are still only available in English (and Dutch) at this time. Whenever an area of the website is completely unavailable in Spanish, you will be automatically redirected to the English version of the website.

New course: Active Druidry

We are happy to announce the launch of a new course in our Grove of Dana online Druid college. The course "Active Druidry" is intended to encourage you to meet your own needs and add new practices or knowledge that are meaningful to you. In turn this Course will help you to document your learning, and then to reflect and review in order to develop a continuing practice of increasing your Druidic knowledge and skills. The Active Druidry course focusses on self-study, based on the Nine Strands of Druidry, and requires a profound learning plan as well as your own learning journals.

This course comes with mentor guidance, and is only available to upgraded members of the New Order of Druids. To enrol in this course, go to Druid College > List of Courses > Specialisation Courses > Active Druidry Course. There, click on "Join Course" and fill out the application form. You will then receive an email with your enrolment key to enter the course.

If you are interested in taking this course, but you are not an upgraded member, you can find more information about upgrading your account at this link:
https://www.druidcircle.org/druid/index.php/en/membership-options

We would like to thank Hawkmoon for creating and providing us with this new course, and hope that the students in this course will thoroughly benefit from it!

Specialisation Course "Becoming Aware" available!

We are happy to announce that the specialisation course "Becoming Aware" is available as of today to our upgraded members. This course had been closed down in the past due to lack of mentorship, but is now reopened.

The Becoming Aware Course is designed to bring you awareness of the world around you by simply re-learning how to use the senses and how to listen to the messages they bring. This course is about You. It is about honing in on who you are and where you are by listening, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting. 

You can enrol in this course in the usual way: go to the menu "Druid College" and then "List of Courses". In the "Course Categories" dropdown-menu, select "Specialisation Courses", and then scroll down until you find "Becoming Aware Course". Click on "JOIN COURSE" on the right, fill out the application form, and follow the instructions you will receive by e-mail.

If you are interested in taking this course, but you are not an upgraded member, you can find more information about upgrading your account at this link:
https://www.druidcircle.org/druid/index.php/en/account-settings/upgrade-my-account

Updates on the Bardic & Ovate Courses

Historical, archaeological and other scientific studies of Celtic culture and spirituality are an ever-changing field, as new discoveries frequently require us to update the scientific consensus and therefore also our own views. As modern Druids, this affects us too as we base our modern Celtic spirituality for a good part on what we know of ancient Celtic culture, history and spirituality.

This means that, occasionally, we may need to check if the contents of our courses is still up-to-date. In the light of these updates, we decided it was necessary to make some changes to the Bardic Course and the Ovate Course. The Druid Course remains unaffected. While these changes are important, we have nonetheless attempted to keep the impact on these courses to a minimum as to cause a minimum of interruption to both students and mentors.

So, what changed?

1. Both the Bardic and Ovate Courses relied heavily on the publications of Frank MacEowen, a professor who was in the meantime considered "discredited" due to historical inaccuracies, cultural appropriation and abstraction, and presenting his own thoughts as genuine ancient Celtic thoughts. We have updated the courses to correct these inaccuracies, though it doesn't mean that some of MacEowen's own thoughts can't still be useful in the context of modern Celtic spirituality, as long as they are not incorrectly represented as historical fact. This can be compared with the "Celtic Tree Calendar", which was once presented by Robert Graves as a historical fact while it was in fact largely a modern invention, though it doesn't mean the concept can't be useful to modern Druids who wish to make use of it in the context of "univerified personal gnosis".

2. Both the Bardic and Ovate Courses refer to "Danu" (or "Dana") as a "primal mother goddess", but the current consensus in historical sciences now rejects this as an invention of the Renaissance Era. The concept of the "primal mother goddess" is therefore now referred to as "Earth Mother" rather than "Danu" in the courses, along with an added explanation on how we should correctly view the ancient mother-figure of Danu in Irish mythology.

3. The Bardic and Ovate Courses refer to the Celtic cosmology of the three realms as "underworld", "middleworld" and "upperworld". In Irish mythology, which forms the fundament of these two courses, these concepts are not historically correct as the Irish Celtis did not consider these as three separate "worlds" but rather as three realms interwoven with each other in one world. This is different from how ancient Celts elsewhere in the world may have viewed it, as they were more directly influenced by Greek and Roman mythology, especially in Gaul and possibly later also in Britain when the Gauls migrated there following the Roman invasions. To avoid confusion for students in the Bardic and Ovate Courses, we have decided to keep consistency there with the Irish version of Celtic cosmology, and therefore minimized the references to the terms of "underworld", "middleworld" and "upperworld", instead referring to them as the "three realms" of Land, Sea and Sky specifically.


What does this mean for you?

We strove to keep the impact of these change to a minimum for both students and mentors. If you have completed any of these courses, or are still taking any of these courses, you do not need to re-do any of the assignments. The outline of the course, and the vast majority of its contents, has not changed and so there are practically no changes to the actual assignments.

We do, however, recommend all active students in the Bardic or Ovate Course to re-download the course Handbook, so that you are sure to use the newest version of the handbook to continue your studies. The new version of the handbook was updated in the course on July 25, so if you signed up for the Bardic Course or Ovate Course after that date, you already have the latest version.

If you purchased the printed course books of the Bardic Course and Ovate Course at our online book shop on lulu.com, you are not required to buy them again of course, as you can download the PDF of the handbook for free in the Grove of Dana online Druid college on our website. If you wish, you can continue to read the course from the book(s), but keep the above changes in mind and double-check the latest PDF version of the handbook if you are in doubt about anything. 

If you purchased the Bardic Course and/or Ovate Course book in printed version from our Lulu online shop after July 25, 2019, you already have the latest version of the books. This only applies to our online webshop at lulu.com, not to third-party webshops such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble as updates there take up to 6 weeks to take effect. 

You can find the printed books of the Bardic, Ovate and Druid Course, as well as the youth Bardic, Ovate and Druid Courses (of which the first two also in Dutch) in our Online Bookstore at Lulu, at this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/neworderofdruids


If you have any questions, feel free to contact your mentor.

We would like to express our thanks to Hawkmoon for his work on updating the Bardic and Ovate Courses to reflect the latest consensus.


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