Natalie Bankmann is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
Mary Kay Kasper once sat in prayer with a tree. Mountains stretched behind her on a landscape of forests and fields, she recently recalled, as she felt the wind push off the tree’s bark toward her. She has done the same with stones and rivers alike in a common druid practice called gazing.
The Green Mountain Druid School in Worcester taught 68-year-old Kasper a form of spirituality based on connecting to the land, and now after 19 years of teaching students like her, the school is headed toward a transition. After current students finish their studies this year, the director plans to step down and the school will go on a pause — with talks of a new owner ongoing as of this February.
“It taught me about who we are in relation to the land and to have respect and honor for all people. It taught me to engage with the land and others in a cooperative, loving way,” said Kasper.
In a state where about 47% of adults never attend religious ceremonies, spirituality is still fostered amid yoga studios, apothecaries, mindfulness retreats and, for some, in nature itself through pagan practices.
“Spiritualities like druidry or wicca offer a viable alternative to traditional religions, specifically making space for gender difference and sexual difference,” said Megan Goodwin, a researcher and novelist who has taught courses on religions, cults and witches at Northeastern University.
Fearn Lickfield opened the Worcester school with her husband Ivan McBeth in 2006. The school would meet six weekends per year between May and October and guide students through rituals and group activities. Lickfield took over as the school’s director after McBeth died in 2016. She originally was looking at retiring, as of late January, but a month later told Community News Service that she was instead just stepping down as director and focusing on other work.
If the school closes, it would mark the loss of a rare space in the U.S. “(Druidry) is an attempt to creatively interpret the history we do have and find a non-Christian, nature-connected way to be religious in a country that makes it hard to do religion in a non-white, non-Christian way,” said Goodwin, who recently wrote a book with University of Vermont religion professor Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst.
The druid teachings practiced in Worcester rest on the idea that love is more powerful than hate, Lickfield said. To correct human relationships with nature, Lickfield teaches her students to practice gratitude and humility.
And it is still possible to learn from druid teachings on your own, Lickfield said. “There is the solitary path of picking up a book and learning about the practices in the tradition and trying that on your own,” she said.
Amidst the volatile political climate and the impending climate disaster, she said, spiritually connecting to the land is exactly what people need.
“We’ve gotten into the humongous mess, and it stems from this disconnect between humans and the rest of nature,” Lickfield said. “The fact that we are animals and built of this earth has been forgotten.”
A druid’s place of worship is within nature. Dreamland Sanctuary, the school’s backyard nature space that promises visitors a space to pursue connection with the land, will continue to be maintained by Lickfield. The sanctuary will be open on Sundays between 2 and 6 p.m. for visitors to connect with its three earth temples.
The main ceremonial site at Dreamland is a stone circle nicknamed the Dragon’s Temple, which McBeth built. The second temple, the Serpent Temple, is a seven-circuit labyrinth surrounded by a grove of trees and themed around water. The Faery Well, a colonial-era well, is the final temple. Old druid folklore tells that waterways can act as doorways to the faery world.
“These are modern examples of ancient technology that are all built with a consciousness to the land and the spirits of this place,” Lickfield said. “They are active and alive in their own right.”
Dreamland also has a guest house that visitors can rent for private spiritual journeys or to be the setting for individual guidance from Lickfield. She said she will continue to organize druid events at Dreamland and the Burlington Earth Clock.
“It’s about manifesting working with nature to create what it is that we want to see, to build the world of our dreams,” she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Green Mountain Druid School in limbo after 19 years, may get new owner.