Feeling into Atmospheres: Druids and the Aesthetics of Ritual

Rituals are one of the key spiritual practices of contemporary Druidry. While beliefs among Druids can be rather eclectic, rituals create a common ground of experience and shape a shared identity. Given that there is hardly any historical or archaeological evidence for what ancient druidic rituals were like, contemporary Druids creatively imagine and enact rituals of their own design—inspired by ancient myths, monuments, places, or natural dynamics (the seasons in particular). They perform larger public ceremonies and more intimate rituals, indoors and outdoors, as a group or alone, and value ‘feeling’ over ‘form’. What rituals have in common is that they are considered transformative and that this transformation should be felt by participants. A ‘good ritual’ is one that resonates in various ways and as a whole with its initial inspiration (e.g. the ‘spirit’ of place, time, and the Druidic tribe). Through ritual participation, then, Druids are transformed to resonate with the ritual and its inspiration. This is achieved, so I argue, through a bodily, sensual, and affective ‘feeling-into’ ritual atmospheres. In this way, the regular participation in rituals can be seen as an education of a particular sensibility and aesthetics which enable Druids to perceive and engage with the sacred within rituals but ultimately also in everyday life.