A druid was a member of the high-ranking priestly class in ancient Celtic societies. Far from being a broadly accessible spiritual role, the position appears to have been embedded within the upper tiers of society - closely aligned with the warrior aristocracy rather than the peasantry.

The nature of Druidic training supports this. Classical sources describe extended periods of education, potentially lasting decades, covering law, ritual, cosmology and oral tradition. Such training required time, patronage and freedom from labour - resources overwhelmingly concentrated among elite families. It is therefore most consistent to understand Druidry as a system of elite reproduction: a parallel track of authority alongside the warrior nobility, not a pathway open to the wider population.

There is no evidence that Druidic education functioned as a mechanism for social mobility from the lower classes. While it cannot be proven that no exceptional individual from outside the elite ever entered the system, every available indicator points toward recruitment from established free and privileged families. In practice, Druidry appears to have been structurally closed to the “debt-bound” and economically dependent majority described in the classical sources.

This directly contradicts much of the modern romanticised image of Druids as folk-spiritual figures or representatives of “the people.”

The Debt-Bound

In Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Gallic Wars, Book 6.13), one of the most important classical accounts of Gaulish society, Caesar describes a rigid social hierarchy.

He distinguishes two honoured classes - the Druids and the equites (warrior aristocracy) - while placing the common population in a position of profound dependency:

“As for the common people, they are treated almost as slaves, venturing nothing of themselves and never taken into counsel. The greater part of them, when they are oppressed by debt, or by the heavy weight of tribute, or by the injustice of the more powerful, commit themselves in slavery to the nobles, who have over them the same rights as masters over slaves.”

Adapted from standard translations including H.J. Edwards and W.A. McDevitte & W.S. Bohn

This description aligns with a society structured around patronage, debt and dependence. Individuals without wealth or protection could become tied to powerful households in client-like relationships, effectively binding themselves to aristocratic patrons for survival.

Debt, tribute pressures and intra-tribal competition all reinforced this hierarchy. Power was concentrated among elites who controlled resources, protection, and legal authority.

What is striking is that the Druids are not presented as critics of this system. They are positioned within it.

One Rule for Them, Another for Everyone Else

Caesar is explicit about the privileges enjoyed by the Druidic class:

“The Druids usually hold aloof from war, and do not pay war-taxes with the rest; they are excused from military service and exempt from all liabilities.”

Latin:

“Druidēs ā bellō abesse cōnsuērunt neque tribūta ūnā cum reliquīs pendunt; mīlitiae vacātiōnem omniumque rērum habent immūnitātem.”

This is not a marginal privilege. It is structural exemption from the core obligations of ordinary society - military service, taxation and civic burden.

Whatever else the Druids were, they were not part of the general population’s material responsibilities. They belonged to a class set apart.

Authority, Influence and Political Function

Other classical writers reinforce the Druids’ elevated position. Diodorus Siculus and Strabo describe Druids as arbiters capable of intervening between armed forces and halting conflict through authority alone. Strabo notes their ability to restrain violence in a manner comparable to a binding social force rather than persuasion alone.

Tacitus, in Annals 14.30, describes Druids during the Roman assault on Mona (Anglesey), where they appear in a ritual capacity - cursing Roman soldiers from the shore while sacred rites are performed. Even in conflict, they are not depicted as combatants but as a distinct ritual authority operating alongside political resistance.

Across sources, a consistent pattern emerges: Druids function as a governing-intellectual-religious class whose authority extends into law, ritual, education and social order.

This is political power in all but name.

Not “politicians” in the modern bureaucratic sense - but a parallel authority structure that advised, legitimised and influenced decision-making at the highest level.

The Problem with Romantic Interpretations

Modern portrayals of Druids often recast them as egalitarian spiritual figures - closer to representatives of the natural world or guardians of ordinary people than to elite authority structures.

This interpretation is not supported by the classical evidence.

The sources instead point toward a priestly-intellectual class embedded within systems of hierarchy, privilege and political influence. Their role is closer to that of a legal-religious elite than a populist or grassroots movement.

It is also important to recognise the Roman context. Caesar had political incentives to emphasise Gaulish inequality and factional dependency, reinforcing Roman narratives of order versus barbarism. However, Roman bias does not require us to invert the picture into its opposite. Rejecting Roman propaganda does not automatically justify romantic reconstruction.

Both extremes distort the evidence.

Conclusion

The surviving evidence consistently places Druids at the centre of elite authority in Iron Age Celtic society.

They were exempt from taxation and military service. They underwent prolonged specialist training requiring resources and patronage. They operated as legal, religious and intellectual authorities. And they appear consistently alongside aristocratic power structures rather than outside them.

There is no indication that Druids functioned as champions of ordinary people. Instead, they appear to have been part of a broader system of elite governance - one in which religious authority, legal judgement and political influence were deeply intertwined.

This was not a conflict between elite and commoner interests.

It was a landscape of competing elites: Roman imperial power on one side, and indigenous aristocratic-religious authority on the other.

The Druids were not outside that system.

They were one of its pillars.

Following my previous post about The Myth of a Majority Germanic England, I feel it appropriate to write a follow-up in light of important new research.

The Silva et al. 2026 paper, “Genomic history and selection in Roman and early medieval Britain,” has refined our understanding of ancestry in Britain. It shows that my earlier interpretation of the France IA-like DNA component in modern English people as primarily Celtic-related was incorrect. That impression was reasonable based on the data available in 2022 (particularly Gretzinger et al), but these newer, higher-resolution results provide a more granular view of timing, heterogeneity and continental sources.

It is times like this when intellectual honesty matters: the evidence does not always match our hopes or prior theories. While the idea of a majority Germanic input across all of England was always overstated, this DNA evidence demonstrates that at least in southern and eastern England, early medieval migrations from the continent contributed a major demographic layer - often 50–80%+ combined North Sea Germanic + Central European ancestry in many individuals today. This was a significant population movement with lasting genetic impact, not merely elite cultural influence.

However, this overlays a persistent British Iron Age substrate (the genetic descendants of pre-Roman Celtic/Brittonic peoples) and northern/western England retained far more continuity. England’s genetics are a real admixture - not a simple story of either “mass replacement” or “mythical majority Germanic.”

Despite the updated evidence, it remains important to resist oversimplification. Even as my previous writing emphasised greater Celtic continuity, this does not dictate personal identity or belief. In fact, I have recently come to realise that I will ultimately not find answers in either Celtic or Germanic traditions.

What began as a search for “roots” has led me to a different realisation: I was associating those roots with everything except myself - the individual encountering systems pre-prepared by forebears.

Ultimately, identity is not something we inherit from DNA percentages, but something we build from within. There is no obligation to follow tradition if tradition does not agree with you.

Going forward, I’ve decided to step back from genetic ancestry discussions. While I remain grateful for what ancient DNA research has revealed about population history, I will no longer centre my own path around these findings. Instead, I plan to focus more directly on animism itself - on lived relationship with the land, the sea, spirits and the more-than-human Otherworld - and on figuring things out in my own way, on my own terms.

I feel it appropriate to celebrate a very underappreciated theory… alcoholic brewing started with women 👀

Why women might have been the first brewers

In many early agricultural societies, women were primarily responsible for gathering wild grains and fruits; preparing food; processing cereals into porridge, bread and other staples; and managing household food storage.

Brewing is essentially a form of food processing. If someone leaves grain mash, fruit juice, or bread soaked in water long enough, wild yeast can ferment it. The people who regularly handled those ingredients would have been the most likely to discover and refine fermentation.

Anthropologists have noted that in many traditional societies documented historically, brewing was often women’s work. Examples include ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, many African societies and numerous indigenous cultures.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily prove that women invented brewing, but it suggests a long-standing association between women and fermentation technologies.

Referring to the Ancients

One of the oldest known references to beer comes from Sumer (c. 1800 BCE), where beer was associated with the goddess Ninkasi, the divine patron of brewing.

The famous “Hymn to Ninkasi” is both a religious text and essentially a beer recipe. The fact that brewing was linked to a female deity may reflect an earlier tradition in which women played a central role in beer production.

Some researchers think beer emerged from early grain processing. Imagine:

1. Grain is collected and stored.

2. Grain is ground and mixed with water.

3. Some mash or bread becomes wet.

4. Natural yeasts ferment it.

5. People discover the resulting liquid is nutritious, safer than contaminated water, and mildly intoxicating.

Since food preparation was frequently a female responsibility in many Neolithic communities, women would have been well positioned to make this discovery. You could say that men could easily have discovered alcohol through fruit fermentation, honey fermentation (mead) or ritual practices. But that means they would have been in a circumstance that introduced them to fruit/honey fermentation if it was in a society that brewed such a thing in the first place. It doesn't really explain who was processing, storing and repeatedly experimenting with those materials in a society where fermentation became a stable cultural practice.

Accidental discovery is one thing. Systematic brewing is another.

It’s not to say that men were incapable of discovering alcohol, but because in many early societies women were already deeply involved in the domestic technologies that fermentation grows out of: grain processing, storage, cooking, pottery use and food preservation.

Some archaeologists have suggested that beer itself may have encouraged the development of agriculture. The old joke is, “Humans didn’t domesticate grain to make bread; they domesticated grain to make beer.” The modern version - ”civilisation began because people wanted beer” - gets repeated everywhere, but the academic roots go back largely to archaeologist Robert Braidwood.

In 1953, at a symposium on the origins of agriculture, he famously posed the question:

Could fermented grain have been a stronger incentive for cultivating cereals than bread?

That wasn’t exactly the joke version but it’s the seed of the “beer before bread” hypothesis.

Hathor is an excellent example that often gets overlooked in casual discussions.

In Egypt, Hathor wasn’t merely associated with pleasure; she was strongly linked with beer, intoxication, festivity, fertility and ecstatic religious experience. One of her most famous myths is the "Destruction of Mankind," where the bloodthirsty lioness Sekhmet is pacified by drinking enormous quantities of beer dyed red to resemble blood. She becomes intoxicated and transforms back into the gentler Hathor. Beer is literally the vehicle of divine transformation in the story.

Appreciating Women’s Contribution to Society

Often women’s contribution to society is undermined by ill-confident men who like to downgrade all around them (men included). Yet it is highly plausible that women were the ones that bring the greatest carefree joy to our society, that of the alcoholic beverage. This post is not trying to say women accidentally discovered alcohol. It is instead saying women may have been the first specialised brewers because brewing emerged from food-processing technologies that women frequently controlled.

Mother nature holds secrets that was shared with the community for all to enjoy. It is not to say that it was a privileged gift, rather a knowledge that all women knew would benefit the community they were a part of.

I have noticed a recurring trend in artwork produced in support of traditionalist values in Britain and America. The craftsmanship is often beautiful, intricate and clearly created with sincerity. Yet I find myself increasingly troubled by the way women are represented within it.

Again and again, motherhood, fertility and heritage are depicted through a very narrow female form: young, slender and conventionally attractive. As I look at these images, I cannot help but feel that they lean too heavily into romanticism and too little into history.

For example, the romantic image of every Celtic woman being a delicate waif is largely a modern invention. Yet if the goal is to celebrate native culture, why do historical accounts and archaeological evidence so rarely appear in these depictions? Both suggest that many Celtic women were sturdy, muscular and capable of hard labour. It is a body type that was well suited to the environment of Northern Europe and the Atlantic Fringe, a region with a long history of dairy consumption, physically demanding agricultural work, cold climates and seasonal food variation. In that environment, women who could maintain energy reserves may have had reproductive advantages. Anthropologists sometimes note that lower-body fat serves as a relatively stable energy reserve for pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Archaeological studies of Neolithic European women have shown arm strength comparable to modern elite athletes, reflecting lives spent carrying water, grinding grain and performing other physically demanding labour. These were not fragile women.

From an evolutionary perspective, a body that says, "I am going to keep some resources in reserve," is not malfunctioning. It is following a strategy that has sustained countless generations of women.

Finding Solidarity

Across continents and thousands of years, there have always been women who weren’t naturally slender, carried visible reserves of energy, worked hard, endured stress, raised families and survived difficult environments.

Those women weren’t anomalies. For most of human history, they were ordinary.

In fact, in many times and places, a woman with some softness around her middle and strength in her hips and legs would have looked more like the norm than the exception.

So while nobody can look at measurements and say, “Ah yes, that’s a Bronze Age Atlantic farming woman,” it’s entirely fair to say that the thicker body type belongs to a very old and very widespread human tradition - one that has existed in hunter-gatherer camps, farming villages, coastal communities and cities across the world for thousands of years.

There is still discrimination against body types that have existed throughout human history and, in many environments, may have offered significant advantages. These modern images often claim to celebrate heritage, yet they frequently reproduce a narrow modern beauty standard. If we wish to honour our ancestors honestly, we must also honour the diversity that existed among them.

When modern pagans speak of returning to ancestral ways of thinking, there is often an assumption that the surviving pantheons represent a worldview born from close observation of nature. The gods are presented as expressions of the land, the seasons and the forces that governed everyday life.

Yet the more time I spend observing and working with living systems - whether gardening, observing wildlife or simply paying attention to how ecosystems function - the less convinced I become that the dominant pantheons emerged from such observations at all.

The natural world does not recognise kings.

There is no sovereign oak issuing commands to the forest. No crowned stag ruling the deer. No monarch directing the affairs of a river system. Ecological relationships are complex, adaptive and interdependent. They are shaped by countless interactions between organisms and environments, not by centralised authority.

Even creatures often invoked as examples of hierarchy fail under closer examination. A wolf pack is not a feudal kingdom. An ant colony is not a human monarchy. Such comparisons reveal more about our tendency to project political systems onto nature than about nature itself.

Yet many pantheons (Semitic and Indo-European alike) place kingship and sovereignty at the very centre of existence.

The gods do not merely possess power. They legitimise authority. They establish hierarchy. They sanctify rulership. Entire mythological cycles revolve around questions of rightful kingship, noble lineage, heroic conquest and the maintenance of social order.

This is curious.

If these traditions truly emerged from close observation of the natural world, why do they so often elevate concepts that have no meaningful equivalent within nature itself?

One could argue that humans are part of nature and therefore human political systems are natural. Yet this misses the point. The question is not whether hierarchy exists. Dominance relationships appear to occur throughout nature. The question is why aristocratic hierarchy becomes cosmologically privileged.

A slug can destroy a cabbage as effectively as any king can issue a decree, and a fungal blight can determine the fate of a harvest more profoundly than a noble lineage.

The fertility of soil, the arrival of rain, the migration of fish and the preservation of food through winter all exert far greater influence over human survival than abstract notions of sovereignty.

Nature operates through material relationships, not political legitimacy. And yet the surviving myths rarely reflect this.

The problem becomes even more apparent when we consider what is absent:

Where is the god of soil structure?

Where is the deity of decomposition?

Where is the divine patron of salt preservation, without which entire communities could starve?

Where are the gods of famine, symbolised by crop pests, moulds, parasites and all the countless organisms that directly shape human existence?

These forces are not marginal to life. They are life. Their absence from the grand mythological narratives suggests that something else is being represented. What if the surviving Semitic or Indo-European pantheons are not reflections of ecological reality at all? What if they are reflections of political reality?

More specifically, what if they are reflections of the worldview of warrior aristocracies who understood the cosmos through the lens of power, inheritance, conquest and rulership? Such people would naturally imagine a king of the gods because they lived in societies organised around kings.

They would naturally imagine divine courts because power was exercised through courts. They would naturally imagine cosmic sovereignty because sovereignty structured their own social world.

In this light, the gods begin to resemble ideological projections rather than ecological observations. The cosmos is reorganised into a familiar political shape. Nature is translated into the language of hierarchy. The result is not an animistic landscape populated by countless agencies and relationships, but a celestial version of aristocratic society itself.

This may explain why animism often feels fundamentally different from reconstructed paganism. Animism does not require a king of the forest. The forest already exists as a network of relationships. Animism does not require a sovereign river. The river possesses agency without needing authority.

Animism does not demand that the world be arranged into ranks and offices because it begins with encounter rather than administration. The more closely one observes real ecological systems, the less necessary kingship appears. It is a human institution, not an ecological principle.

Perhaps this is why I find myself increasingly drawn toward the unnamed and overlooked presences of the world - the soil, the slugs, the fungi, the salt, the weather and the countless interactions that make life possible. They seem far closer to the realities that shaped human existence than the concerns of divine aristocracies.

If there is wisdom to be found in ancestral ways of thinking, it may lie not in reproducing the cosmologies of ancient elites, but in recovering relationships with the living world that existed before those cosmologies came to dominate the record.

Get ready for lists.

I recently saw Elon Musk quote-retweet a discussion about ancient population turnover in Europe with the comment:

“Ancient cultures were extremely violent, not ‘peace-loving ecologists’ at all!”

What struck me wasn’t the archaeology itself. It was the emotional intensity behind the reaction - and how familiar that reaction has become online whenever people discuss Marija Gimbutas, Neolithic Europe or the possibility that some ancient societies may have been less hierarchical or less war-driven than later civilisations.

At first glance, this seems strange. Why should the idea of peaceful prehistoric cultures bother anyone so much?

But the argument is almost never just about archaeology. It is about human nature.

Prehistory as Political Myth

Whenever people argue about ancient Europe online, they are usually also arguing about:

• patriarchy,

• capitalism,

• hierarchy,

• violence,

• technology,

• gender

• and whether our current social systems are inevitable.

The stakes feel high because prehistory is often treated as proof of what humanity “really” is.

If ancient humans were always:

• violent,

• patriarchal,

• competitive,

• hierarchical

• and domination-driven,

then modern systems built around hierarchy and competition can be framed as “natural.”

But if human societies once existed in forms that were:

• more communal,

• less stratified,

• more reciprocal

• or less obsessed with conquest,

then suddenly the present stops looking inevitable. That possibility makes some people deeply uncomfortable.

The Shadow of Marija Gimbutas

Much of this modern argument traces back to the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas.

Gimbutas proposed that Neolithic “Old Europe” - before the spread of Indo-European steppe cultures - may have been relatively egalitarian, agricultural, goddess-centred and less warlike than the Bronze Age societies that followed.

Her ideas became enormously influential outside archaeology:

• feminist thought,

• eco-spiritual movements,

• anti-war philosophy,

• goddess spirituality

• and critiques of patriarchy all drew inspiration from her work.

And that cultural influence is exactly why reactions to her remain so emotionally charged decades later.

For some people, Gimbutas represents the possibility that patriarchy and militarised hierarchy were not eternal features of human society - that they emerged historically and therefore could potentially change.

For others, that interpretation feels threatening because it challenges deeply held assumptions:

• that dominance is natural,

• that hierarchy is inevitable,

• that civilisation advances through conquest,

• or that patriarchy is universal and biologically fixed.

This is why discussions about Indo-Europeans online often become strangely heated. The argument quickly stops being about pottery shards or burial mounds and becomes a battle over modern identity and ideology.

What Ancient DNA Actually Shows

Recent ancient DNA research - including work by David Reich and many other geneticists - has dramatically reshaped our understanding of prehistoric Europe.

The evidence strongly supports large-scale migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Europe during the Bronze Age. These migrations appear to have significantly transformed the genetic makeup of many European populations.

But genetics alone cannot fully explain how these transformations occurred.

Population turnover does not automatically tell us:

• whether migrations were violent invasions,

• elite dominance,

• gradual assimilation,

• climate-driven movement,

• intermarriage,

• cultural diffusion,

• or some combination of all of these.

Ancient DNA reveals movement and ancestry. It does not provide a complete moral narrative. This is where online discourse often collapses into oversimplification. Some people interpret steppe migrations as proof that violent conquest is the engine of civilisation.

Others continue to imagine a perfectly peaceful prehistoric utopia destroyed by invaders. Reality was almost certainly more complicated than either myth. Human societies have always been fluid and contradictory.

The Problem With “Human Nature”

One of the most persistent habits in political discourse is the attempt to justify current systems by projecting them into deep prehistory.

People say:

• patriarchy is natural because it is ancient,

• capitalism is natural because humans are competitive,

• hierarchy is natural because dominance exists in nature,

• war is inevitable because humans have always fought.

But anthropology and archaeology paint a much messier picture.

Human beings have lived in:

• egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands,

• rigid empires,

• matrilineal societies,

• communal agricultural settlements,

• warrior aristocracies,

• gift economies,

• reciprocal trade networks,

• monarchies

• and highly stratified class systems.

There is no single eternal human template.

Even warfare varies dramatically across time and region. Some archaeological sites show massacres and fortifications. Others show surprisingly little evidence of organised violence over long periods.

This variability matters.

Because once we acknowledge that humans have organised themselves in radically different ways throughout history, it becomes harder to argue that our current systems are biologically inevitable.

Why These Arguments Matter

I think this is ultimately why discussions about ancient Europe provoke such strong reactions online.

People are not only debating the past.

They are debating whether modern society is:

• fixed or changeable,

• natural or historical,

• inevitable or contingent.

The image of prehistoric humanity becomes a symbolic battlefield onto which modern anxieties are projected. The “peaceful Neolithic” and the “eternally violent human species” are both myths in their purest forms. Human history is more unsettling than either extreme because it suggests something far less comfortable: we are adaptable.

We contain the capacity for:

• violence and cooperation,

• domination and reciprocity,

• cruelty and care,

• hierarchy and egalitarianism.

And that means the future is not predetermined by the past.

Which may be exactly what makes these conversations so emotionally charged.

There’s a particular kind of disconnection that’s hard to put into words. Not a rejection of where you’re from, but a quiet sense that what you’ve been handed doesn’t quite reach far enough back. That something older sits beneath it - unspoken, half-remembered, but still present.

For many in England, identity is framed through what came later: the language we speak, the history we’re taught, the cultural markers that feel fixed and unquestioned. But these things did not emerge fully formed. They settled over time, shaping what came before without entirely replacing it.

Sometimes that sense of incompleteness isn’t confusion - it’s recognition.

Layered Inheritance

What we call “English” is not a single origin. It is the result of accumulation.

History does not move in clean breaks where one people replaces another and everything resets. It builds in layers - of language, culture, belief and power - each one settling over the last. Some layers become dominant. Others recede. But none vanish entirely.

This is true of Britain as much as anywhere else. The identity we now call “English” is one layer among many. It sits on top of older ways of life that once defined the land just as fully.

To understand inheritance this way is to move away from the idea of a single, fixed origin. Instead, it becomes something deeper and more complex: a sediment of histories, each still present, even if no longer visible at the surface.

What Came Before

Before Old English was spoken, the peoples of Britain lived within different linguistic and cultural worlds. They spoke Celtic languages. Their stories, beliefs and relationships to the land were shaped by different frameworks - ones that placed meaning in landscape, in cycles and in the unseen.

These traditions were not marginal. They were the dominant way of understanding the world for centuries.

And while they varied across regions, they formed part of a wider cultural sphere that connected Britain to neighbouring parts of Europe. This was not an isolated past, but a shared one - rooted in language, story and lived experience.

The Shift, Not the Erasure

With the arrival and rise of Anglo-Saxon culture, a profound shift took place.

Language changed. Old English became dominant. New systems of law, identity and social organisation emerged. Over time, these became the defining features of what would later be recognised as England.

But this was not a clean replacement.

The earlier populations did not disappear. They were not erased in a single moment. Instead, they were absorbed into a changing cultural landscape. Their languages faded, their traditions were suppressed or transformed and their presence became less visible - but not absent.

What changed most dramatically was not the people themselves, but the framework through which life was understood.

Choosing a Different Layer

This is where the question of personal alignment begins.

If identity is layered, then connection is not limited to what sits at the surface. It is possible to feel drawn to an earlier layer - not out of rejection of what came later, but out of recognition that it, too, forms part of what you inherit.

Choosing to engage with Celtic language, mythology or spiritual traditions is not an act of invention. It is not a claim to purity, nor an attempt to reconstruct an unbroken identity that no longer exists.

It is a decision to orient oneself toward a different part of that layered inheritance that speaks to you.

We inherit more than one story. Choosing which one to listen to is not fraud - it is recognition.

A Grounded Connection

This kind of choice does not require permission, nor does it depend on proving lineage with precision.

It rests on a simpler foundation: that the cultural and spiritual traditions associated with Celtic-speaking peoples were once part of the fabric of Britain itself. They are not foreign imports. They are part of the deep background of the land.

Engaging with them is not about becoming something else. It is about listening more closely to what is already there, even if it has long been quietened.

Respect and Clarity

That said, this engagement should be approached with awareness.

It does not mean claiming identities that belong to living cultures with their own continuity, such as Welsh or Irish. It does not mean speaking over those traditions or treating them as interchangeable.

It means recognising the difference between:

• shared historical roots

• and distinct, living cultural identities

Respecting that distinction does not weaken the connection - it strengthens it.

Listening Beneath the Surface

The story of England did not begin with a single people and it does not belong to a single layer of history.

It is the result of many worlds overlapping, merging and reshaping each other over time. Beneath the surface of what is most visible lies a deeper continuity - one that does not always speak loudly, but has not disappeared.

To turn toward that older layer is not to deny the present. It is to acknowledge that the past is still there, shaping what came after in ways that are not always obvious.

And sometimes, choosing to listen is enough.

Everybody grows in their own way, at their own pace. We all need different conditions to thrive. So please - don’t compare yourself to others.

~ Karen Salmansohn

If we are to take a lesson from nature—true nature—then we must observe it closely. This is not just about appearances, but about the inner flow of all that is sentient. One oak tree will not respond to its environment the same way another does; in the same way, one human will not mirror another. Life spreads horizontally, reaching, responding, and connecting, creating a web of individuals co-existing.

Animism is not merely a belief system—it is reality. We imagine ourselves as independent, isolated beings, capable of great feats if only the mindset is right. But as Richard Feynman noted, we are extrusions of the world that formed us. Every cell in our body, every thought in our mind, is connected to the earth that shaped it.

We may appreciate something from afar, but we cannot truly become it. Our material form dissolves at death, returning to the world and being reborn into new forms, carried through the cycles of climate, soil and sea. Every cell of what we were flows into what will be. This is why honesty with where, how and why we live is essential. To swim against the tide is to court self-destruction. We cannot be what we are not.

This cycle of death and rebirth is only possible through relationship. Our decay feeds the growth of trees; the wind disperses seeds; the rain returns to the ocean. Life and death are not separate—they are a continuous flow, a tide of energy moving through all things.

In life, we feel a pull toward what attracts us, a current of energy we cannot ignore. I may feel drawn to the sea, but I cannot breathe underwater. No matter how far technology extends our reach, our biology, our form and our limitations remain.

In death, that energy moves elsewhere. It enters the cycle again, beyond names or concepts. Whether we call it soul, consciousness or self, it always flows. Like the tide, it moves, connecting the past, present and future in an endless rhythm of becoming.

To live with the tide is not passivity—it is noticing, yielding and choosing where to swim, always with awareness of the currents beneath. We honour the energy within and around us by moving with it, not against it, by trusting the invisible threads that bind us to all things, and by remembering that even the smallest motion of our being contributes to the greater flow.

Like the tides that have shaped the oceans since the world’s beginning, the energy of life flows through us, eternal and unbroken—a pulse from the deep, a reminder that all things, past and present, are woven into the living sea of existence.

Among the loudest voices in ethnic nationalist circles - those boasting about Germanic culture, ancestral continuity and the unbreakable chain of “superior” blood - are folks who love to preach “class” as the natural order: elites on top, plebs at the bottom. Divine hierarchy, eternal bloodlines, reincarnation reserved for the worthy. How convenient.

But here’s the dirty secret they never acknowledge: the elite’s ultimate power isn’t in their DNA, their castles or their blue-check verification - it’s in our belief that they’re special. Why do you think they work overtime to convince everyone that the only blood worth focusing on is that of the Germanic conquerors which carried some elite essence worth worshipping? It’s because the whole edifice stands on peasant consent. The moment peasants stop believing, stop caring, stop scrolling, the throne room empties. History is littered with “divine” kings and “superior” bloodlines that vanished the second the crowd shrugged and said, “Nah.”

In short: elitist superiority is a consensual illusion. Without peasant buy-in, there’s no power left to boast about.

The History: Borrowed Legitimacy, Easily Revoked

To get why some modern reconstructionist Germanic pagans push this mindset so hard, look at what they’re trying to revive: a worldview where hierarchy feels eternal and ordained. Kings claimed God (or the gods) hand-picked them, but that only held as long as peasants - and even nobles and the church - believed it. When belief cracked under famines, endless bad wars or Enlightenment ideas, the masks slipped.

Take the French Revolution: they guillotined the “divine” Louis XVI after the masses rejected divine-right absolutism. Or the English Civil War: Parliament and the commons beheaded Charles I once they stopped buying the “God’s anointed” story. Closer to home for the Germanic crowd, peasant revolts like England’s 1381 uprising (Wat Tyler’s Rebellion) or Germany’s 1525 Peasants’ War exploded precisely when belief in elite legitimacy snapped. Peasants looked up and asked, “Why should we keep feeding these parasites?” John Ball’s famous sermon - ”When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” - cut straight to the bone: if we’re all from the same dirt, why the pretend hierarchy?

Online influencers peddling ancestral connections to “influential” figures reveal how deeply they still live by these ideals. Just like their medieval forebears, they praise “superior” status while depending on the masses to accept modern serfdom: endless content consumption, merch buys, Patreon subs and defending their hot takes in comment wars. The lord’s castle looked impressive until peasants decided the “divine blood” (or viral clout) wasn’t worth another harvest - or another refresh.

“Elite Blood” Is Genetically Hilarious – And Belief Makes It ‘Pure’

The Germanic pagan idea that you can only reincarnate within your bloodline (tied to notions like hamingja, the inherited ancestral fortune that supposedly sticks to kin) is spiritually gatekept: souls too posh for peasant rebirth. But it’s only relevant if we peasants keep believing your soul demands a VIP blood ticket. Stop caring and the spiritual VIP list becomes as meaningful as an expired club card.

Genetics laughs hardest: autosomal DNA halves every generation. After 7–10 generations (~200–300 years), any specific “glorious ancestor’s” contribution is statistically near-zero due to random shuffling. Pedigree collapse means most Europeans descend from medieval “elites” like Charlemagne through endless overlapping branches - everyone’s got the blood or no one does. The only thing keeping “elite blood” special is our collective agreement to pretend it’s undiluted and exclusive. Withdraw belief and poof - it’s just another family tree with the same peasant dirt on the roots.

Modern Influencers: Fragile Elites Living on Borrowed Belief

Today’s online “elites” - YouTubers, X posters, podcasters with thousands hanging on their ancestral hot takes - are the perfect case study. Their status rests entirely on followers believing they’re authentic experts, superior tastemakers worth the time. That 100k (or 500k) follower count? It’s not innate power - it’s peasants choosing to believe their opinions matter.

One viral “this guy’s full of it” thread, a boycott or mass indifference and suddenly they’re shouting into an empty echo chamber. Brands flee, Patreon dries up, algorithms bury them. Their “influence” is rented monthly from the same masses they subtly (or not-so-subtly) look down on. At least medieval lords extracted grain; modern ones need constant dopamine hits from peasant likes. Withdraw belief and the superiority complex deflates faster than a cancelled influencer’s ego.

The Ultimate Dependence: Your Apathy Is Their Kryptonite

Strip away the myth: elites require our consent to feel - and be - superior. They need us to nod at their ancestry boasts, subscribe to the narrative and amplify their voice. When peasants withdraw that consent - through mockery, logging off, quiet quitting the fandom or just not caring - the power vanishes. No army of knights, no algorithm tweak, no DNA chart can force belief back.

History’s verdict is clear: when the masses stop playing along, hierarchies crumble. The peasant’s greatest weapon isn’t a pitchfork - it’s indifference.

Conclusion: Claim the Power

So next time someone flexes their “elite blood,” reincarnation exclusivity or superior Germanic essence, smile politely and remember: their whole identity depends on you caring.

Don’t. Scroll past. Unfollow. Laugh in the comments. The moment we stop believing they’re special, they stop mattering.

The real power? It’s always been with the peasant. Time we wore it like a badge.

The dark waters of the abyssal mother are rippling once more.

I was reading a conversation on twitter (X) that I think summarised the attitude of some strands of far-right reasonings very well. It was between a man and a woman where the woman was truthfully stating that women do not owe society babies. The man in response went from a civic-duty argument to psychological tactics that played on emotion, implying women benefit from society and therefore are morally obligated to “give back” by having children (simply because they’re the only ones who can).

Diving deeper into the truth, it reveals its far uglier face.

This kind of voice is gaining traction and a lot of it is hiding behind the mask of protecting women (ironically). By claiming that a woman is one through biology, they are setting the stage for a woman to be nothing but her biology. History shows that appeals to ‘protect women’ have often been followed by efforts to restrict their autonomy once power is secured. This historical hand was what struck the core of the deep, structuring the ways of the patriarchy that many of the oppressed rose against through generations of pain and suffering.

And we risk returning to it if we do not resist.

What’s up their sleeve?

Demographic collapse is a real issue. Welfare states require population replacement or immigration. The UK is one such example of the latter and many in this country want to swap immigration for “native” generations. But the problem is, a lot of far-right pro-natalist rhetoric isn’t really about “loving families” or “supporting children.” It’s about lineage, inheritance, demographic dominance and preserving existing hierarchies of wealth and power.

Women become symbolic carriers of continuity - of bloodlines, nationhood and property transmission - and their archetypes painted by men. These same far-right spaces frame women’s independence, career prioritisation and childfree lifestyles as civilisational decline. The idea of the “dignified mother” paints a certain stance as noble, but doesn’t mention how it comes with conditions.

This blends into anti-feminism, anxiety about declining male status and the fear of “Western collapse.”

When someone says, “What happens when there aren’t any people to pay the taxes anymore?” They are shifting the debate from individual rights to collective survival, and frame reproduction as an economic necessity.

There is truth to this statement. But this is a rhetorical move. It presumes that the economy must continue in its current form, the nation-state must endure and that those goals override bodily autonomy.

So what if we don’t care about societal continuity?

The above argument only had persuasive power if the receiver already accepts what they say is true. It often feels like a trap because it sets up a binary and thus a false dichotomy (Charlie Kirk was famous for this). Binary framing shuts down nuance and prevents structural discussion.

If the receiver instead believes systems evolve and collapse all the time, demographic shrinkage is not automatically immoral and bodily autonomy is non-negotiable; then the rhetorical pressure fails.

Around about this point, the argument then shifts again to another rhetoric. Usually along the lines of, “You consume and enjoy modern civilisation - therefore you are morally obligated to reproduce to sustain it.”

This move implies access to modern goods is conditional on fulfilling demographic duty - reframing rights to conditional privileges. There is a key leap that easily dismisses this, best described in examples:

1. Using roads does not obligate you to produce asphalt workers.

2. Enjoying books does not obligate you to produce future authors.

3. Liking hospitals does not obligate you to produce nurses. Etc.

When children are born into this world, we are accepting the responsibility to love them unconditionally. We should consider if any society that demands reproductive obligation from women is worth supporting?

So what for the future of humanity?

A liberal or left-wing response to population decline begins with a core principle: bodily autonomy is non-negotiable. Reproduction is not a civic debt owed in exchange for enjoying modern life, paying taxes or benefiting from infrastructure. Instead of coercion or moral condemnation, liberal societies aim to remove the barriers that prevent people from having the number of children they actually want. That means policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, housing stability, healthcare access and flexible work.

If society benefits from the next generation, then society should help bear the cost - voluntarily and collectively, not by framing women’s bodies as demographic tools.

At the same time, liberalism does not deny that aging populations create economic strain. Its solutions tend to include immigration to stabilise the workforce, economic adaptation through automation and productivity gains, pension reform, and in some cases rethinking growth-based economic models. The underlying philosophy is that if a system can only survive by subordinating individual autonomy - especially along gender lines - then the system must evolve rather than demand biological obligation. Continuity matters, but it does not automatically override personal freedom.

During the height of the British Empire, Anglo-Saxonism evolved from a cultural identity into a racialised imperial ideology.

It claimed that “Anglo-Saxon peoples” were uniquely suited to govern colonies, spread Christianity and civilise the world. Writers like Rudyard Kipling echoed this belief in moral and racial destiny, while figures such as Cecil Rhodes openly advocated Anglo-Saxon global dominance. Culture and race blurred; “Anglo-Saxon” increasingly meant biologically superior.

In the United States, the term became synonymous with white, Protestant and Northern European identity. It shaped immigration restriction laws, anti-Catholic politics and early eugenics movements. “WASP” - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant - became shorthand for America’s ruling elite.

This history matters because the language never fully disappeared.

The Surviving Ideology

It is not wrong for white Britons to feel pride in their heritage. What is dangerous is pride built on distorted history or outdated racial science. When heritage becomes hierarchy, we lose the truth of it.

Today, opposition to demographic change is often framed not as racial superiority but as traditionalism, cultural continuity or civilisational defence. The language has softened, but the underlying structure sometimes remains.

There is no active suppression of “Anglo-Saxons” as a people. What exists instead is a shift away from racial hierarchy as a legitimate organising principle. Yet glorifying empire without acknowledging its supremacist foundations risks reviving the logic that justified it.

More concerning is when demographic discussion merges culture and biology - when “birth rates” become strategy, when immigration becomes invasion, when identity becomes arithmetic.

That is when older ideas resurface in modern dress.

The Echo of Eugenics

In the late 19th century, eugenics sought to “improve” humanity through controlled reproduction. Coined by Francis Galton in 1883, it argued that intelligence and moral worth were inherited and that society should encourage the “fit” to reproduce.

It soon became coercive. Those labelled “feeble-minded,” poor or mentally unwell - often immigrants or minorities - were sterilised. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld forced sterilisation in Buck v. Bell, ruling that public welfare justified bodily intrusion.

Few today openly endorse eugenics. Yet when entire groups are routinely described as low-IQ, barbaric or biologically incompatible, the philosophical echo is unmistakable. The vocabulary has changed; the hierarchy has not.

How Ideas Travel

Since roughly 2014, a pattern has emerged:

Phase 1 – Online Subculture
Civilisational YouTube channels, anti-immigration commentary, culture-war framing.

Phase 2 – Intellectualisation
Rhetoric reframed as demographic concern, cultural continuity, free speech.

Phase 3 – Political Interface
Media figures and politicians overlap. Language softens; themes persist.

The key question is not whether individuals are extremists. It is this:

What ideas are being normalised - and how do they evolve as they approach power?

Outside academia, “Anglo-Saxon” is increasingly used as civilisational branding. It casts Britain as a singular historical organism rooted in law, Protestantism and empire.

This framing often combines:

• External boundary enforcement (immigration restriction)

• Internal moral discipline (work ethic, hostility to welfare, suspicion of single mothers or the mentally unwell)

Immigration becomes not just policy, but existential threat. Complex economic pressures are reframed as civilisational decline.

Such narratives gain traction because people feel strain - housing shortages, stretched services, rapid change. Political entrepreneurs simplify these anxieties and attach them to identity.

That simplification is powerful. It is also dangerous.

A Way Forward

“You belong if you obey the law and fulfil duties.”

I was born here. My family has been here for generations (with my family tree going back to the early 18th century). My childhood, my language, my memories - all of them are rooted in this place. Every cell came from here. Yet I am told that unless I subscribe to a particular doctrine - religious, imperial, moral - I am not English enough.

That tells me something important.

The problem is not migration. It is not demographics. It is not heritage. The problem is the demand for ideological proof.

Belonging that requires performance is not belonging. It is a test.

And I will not sit it.

England does not need to be purified. It does not need to be rescued. And I do not need to prove my right to stand on the soil where I was born.

If that is not sufficient for those who claim to defend this country, then what they are defending is not a people. It is a narrow script of obedience.

I decline the script.

And I remain.

I recently encountered an intriguing claim circulating online: that the Latin term indigenus was first applied to the Germanic peoples by Tacitus around 98 AD, before it was used for any other group in the world. The assertion is compelling at first glance, but upon closer examination it proves to be historically inaccurate.

More interestingly, however, the misunderstanding reveals something deeper - how modern anthropocentric narratives often overlook the older, more land-centred ways language once functioned.

Earlier Uses of Indigenus

The word indigenus (or indigena) in Latin simply means “native-born,” “sprung from the land,” or “inhabitant of a place.” It was not coined as the name of a people, nor reserved for a specific ethnicity. It was an adjective - a descriptor - already embedded in Roman vocabulary long before Tacitus wrote his Germania.

A clear and earlier example appears in Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19 BC). In Book 8, line 314, Evander describes the ancient inhabitants of the site that would later become Rome:

haec nemora indigenae fauni nymphaeque tenebant
These woodlands were held by native-born fauns and nymphs.

Here, indigenae does not refer to a human tribe at all. It describes mythic beings - fauns and nymphs - as originating from the landscape itself. This predates Tacitus by over a century and demonstrates that the term was already well established in poetic, cultural and philosophical language.

Why This Matters

Correcting the historical record is only part of the discussion. The more revealing aspect is how the word was used. Indigenus did not initially centre human identity or political ownership. Instead, it often pointed to belonging through emergence - the idea that certain beings arise from the land rather than merely occupy it.

The Native-Born Inhabitants

This post is not an argument against modern concepts of indigeneity, nor is it an attempt to diminish their importance. Rather, it is an invitation to notice an older layer of meaning that coexisted with them.

The Latin usage suggests a worldview in which the land itself was not an inert stage upon which history unfolded, but a generative presence. When Virgil speaks of indigenae, he does not invoke heavenly gods or distant ancestors. He speaks of beings who are of the place, inseparable from its forests, rivers and soil. The emphasis is not on conquest or lineage, but on emergence and continuity.

In this sense, the term preserves a subtle form of animism - the recognition that landscapes possess their own primacy and agency. Long before borders, nations or legal claims, there existed the acknowledgment that some presences belong to a place not by declaration, but by origin.

Closing Reflection

The viral claim about Tacitus collapses under historical scrutiny, but the discussion it provokes is worthwhile. Language often carries memories older than the cultures that inherit it.

Indigenus reminds us that belonging was once understood not solely as a human right or political status, but as a relationship between life and land itself. In revisiting the word, we are not merely correcting a misconception - we are glimpsing a worldview in which the earth was not simply owned, but recognised as the source from which identity itself could arise.

Every few years the internet rediscovers an ancient deity and proclaims them the “true original god” of a civilisation. The names change - Mithras, Sol Invictus, Apollo, the Monad, Yahweh, Zeus, Odin - but the narrative structure rarely does.

I touched on this briefly before, but what interests me is not the deity itself - it is the pattern of replacement. Faces are scrubbed from statues, restored, renamed, elevated again. Civilisations shift, empires fall, yet the instinct to crown a single figure as the axis of truth persists. The relationship with the unknown, the Otherworld or the natural flow of existence quietly moves to the background when identity and politics take centre stage.

What is this pattern?

Like constellations around a pole star, people rotate around the imagery that represents them as a collective whole. You see it today in flag displaying, religious symbols on pendants and sometimes even on tattoos. Marking oneself with a representative image establishes a sense of belonging - one so powerful it’s inherited through descendants - at the sacrifice of flexibility. The word tribalism comes to mind as I write this. Diverting from the accepted “god” of the tribe is betrayal on an ancestral level, thus unforgiveable and taboo.

This may seem dramatic but faith is what directs human action. When humans believe in something so strongly, everything is affected. Often change or ‘chaos’ are personified as something to be confronted or contained. The unknown and unpredictability may be the very core of existence and evolution, but it also is what we as a species are most afraid of.

Why the ‘True God’ Narrative Repeats

It all boils down to one simple sentence: the names change, the archetype stays.

What reappears is not a forgotten deity waiting patiently beneath the soil of history, but a familiar human instinct - the urge to locate a single axis around which identity, morality and destiny can rotate. Each era inherits the same psychological blueprint and redraws it with new symbols. The costume changes; the role does not.

Declaring a “true god” offers certainty in a world that rarely provides it. It turns complexity into hierarchy, plurality into singular focus and uncertainty into narrative. The appeal is understandable. A central figure is easier to defend, easier to rally around, and easier to pass down than a living, shifting relationship with the unknown.

Yet this repetition reveals something quietly ironic: what is presented as timeless revelation is often a mirror of contemporary needs. The deity crowned as eternal frequently reflects the anxieties, politics and aspirations of the age doing the crowning. The proclamation of “truth” becomes less a discovery and more a declaration of belonging.

Conclusion

If the names continue to change while the archetype remains, then perhaps the question is no longer which god stands at the centre, but why we keep insisting there must be only one. Each generation believes it has uncovered the forgotten truth, yet the structure beneath that revelation often looks remarkably familiar. We replace the mask and call it renewal, but the ritual of replacement itself rarely changes.

Perhaps the challenge is not to find the next “true god,” but to recognise the reflex that keeps producing one. If the archetype persists because we never question it, then the real act of change may not lie in discovering a new symbol, but in deciding whether we still need the same centre at all.

A recent United Nations (UN) report has claimed that 70% of the world’s freshwater aquifers are at a point of no return. Alongside this, there has been significant loss of large lake water, glacier mass and natural wetlands. It has been interestingly described as “water bankruptcy.”

The word bankruptcy originates from the Latin words bancus (meaning bench or table) and ruptus (meaning broken). So essentially they are describing the water ways as a broken provider to our sustenance.

I consider the sea the lifeblood of the planet and I am not the only one who thinks this. The same term is used by the Institute for Environmental Research and Education (IERE) when promoting the importance of the sea. However, it is not for humankind. When the latter is threatened, then the former tend to suffer the consequences.

If we were to remove the “trillions of dollars” of loss this has caused (who cares?), then we can focus on what really matters. The new focused attention on water.

Offshore water supply hidden in the ground is the proposed answer to this crisis. Yet this solution, while innovative, reveals something deeper than a simple technological fix. It shows how far we have drifted from seeing water as a living system and instead view it as a reserve to be tapped, extracted and monetised.

Aquifers beneath the seabed are not new; they have existed for millennia, quietly storing freshwater where rivers once flowed before sea levels rose. What is new is our desperation to reach them. Drilling beneath the ocean floor for drinking water is a striking symbol of modern humanity — capable of extraordinary engineering feats, yet often reluctant to confront the behaviours that created the scarcity in the first place.

Water is not vanishing in the literal sense. The planet’s water cycle continues, oceans still breathe clouds into the sky and rain still falls. What is disappearing is accessible, clean and naturally replenished freshwater. Pollution, over-extraction, deforestation and climate instability disrupt the delicate timing and distribution of that cycle. We are not running out of water; we are running out of balance.

The language of “bankruptcy” is telling. Bankruptcy implies poor management, reckless spending and delayed consequences finally coming due. It is less a natural disaster and more an accounting error written across centuries. But unlike financial debt, this ledger is paid not in currency, but in soil fertility, biodiversity, food security and human stability.

Turning offshore reserves into the next frontier risks repeating the same pattern - finding a new “account” to withdraw from without correcting the underlying system. Innovation is necessary, but it cannot replace stewardship. Technology can buy time; it cannot manufacture renewal.

If the sea is the planet’s lifeblood, then rivers are its veins, wetlands its kidneys, glaciers its memory and aquifers its hidden marrow. To treat one part as expendable is to misunderstand the organism as a whole. Protecting freshwater is not simply an environmental cause; it is an act of planetary self-preservation.

The real solution is not only beneath the ocean floor. It is in restoring wetlands that filter water naturally, protecting forests that call rain back to the land, reducing contamination at its source and recognising that water is not merely a resource - it is a relationship. Until that shift happens, every new reservoir we discover will feel less like salvation and more like borrowing time from a future already asking us to change.

There’s a quality in English culture that feels… inhabited. Not loudly mythical, not heroic in the Norse way, but quietly watched. Ruins covered in moss. Footpaths that predate roads. A sense that something was here first and never quite left. This is an afterimage distinctly Celtic.

Our instinctive recognition of persons in our homeland of England is based on our relationships and interactions, rather than “beliefs.” The question should not be: do English people believe in spirits? Instead it should be: how English people behave when no one is watching?

Personhood Before Proof

From the very basic everyday things we do - apologising to a door after we bashed into it, thanking those in the workforce, speaking gently to plants - may seem ridiculous to others but it is a reflex of assumed personhood. For me, this is a Celtic mindset, not a Germanic one. This is because in Celtic worldview, personhood is relational not hierarchical, agency does not require humanity, and you don’t need certainty to show respect. You act as if something or someone might be listening, because that’s the safest and most ethical stance. This is not a value judgment but a comparison of cultural instincts.

Germanic cultures, by contrast (broadly speaking), tend to clearly separate persons vs. objects. There is emphasis on status and role over mutual recognition, treating politeness as rule-bound, not instinctive. English politeness is pre-emptive. It isn’t about obedience or efficiency - it’s about not violating an unseen social or moral boundary.

That “sorry!” to a chair is not comic. It’s a micro-ritual.

The Presence in the Room

This integrated sense that a room can be occupied even when empty is very Celtic. By contrast, Germanic myth tends to make beings loud, named and event-driven. If a Germanic spirit is present, something happens. But if a Celtic one is present, you feel watched - and that’s enough. English ghost stories reflect this as a sense of wrongness; a chill, a hesitation, a glance over the shoulder with no explanation. This is inherited perception, not superstition.

If we were to compare the English with their Welsh/Irish neighbours, you can see exactly what survived, what was muted and what was forced to adapt. The English vibe isn’t fully Celtic - it’s Celtic behaviour under constraint.

The English person would sense the presence, keeping the ghost in the corner of his/her eye. Meanwhile, the Welsh/Irish person would turn and nod to it. Presence is implied, never declared; with silence carrying meaning and implying danger. Thus the English relationship with the unseen is private and deniable, a simple “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Wales and Ireland retained a more confident sense of kinship with place. Danger is communal memory, not personal intuition reflecting in their more externalised stories of the Otherworld and our relationship with it.

Speech as Relationship, Not Command

How English people speak to the non-human world is deeply telling. It is reflected in conversation, especially when speaking to space and objects (acknowledging presence) in appeasement:

• “Excuse me” when passing nothing in particular

• “Mind yourself” / “Careful there” said to oneself

• “There we are” when finishing a task (as if reassuring something)

• “Right then” to signal transition, not command

• “Oops—sorry!” even when alone

• “Could you…?” instead of “Do this.”

• “Would you mind…?” even when power is clear

• “Whenever you’re ready” instead of “Hurry up”

• “Let’s have a look” (shared action, even alone)

• “Cheers” used not just for celebration but closure

• “Much appreciated” for minor, expected acts

• “Thanks anyway” even when help failed

• “Apologies—didn’t mean to” when no harm occurred

• “My fault” to defuse tension, not assign blame

• “Behave yourself” (to inanimate things - speaking to the non-human as social equals)

• “That’ll do” said gently, not dismissively

• “Take care” said reflexively (you don’t just leave. You ask permission to disengage).

There is a consistent joke amongst the English as seen in King Charles’ treatment of plants and the tv programme The Good Life when talking to plants is initially seen as lunacy. But it nonetheless was known in instinct before science decided its legitimacy. We don’t command plants. We ask them to grow, apologise for pruning and thank them for blooming.

These all mirror Celtic practices where trees had kinship status, cutting required permission, and wells and stones were addressed, not exploited.

Conclusion

English culture feels like living in a place where the past is not dead, just patient. In this sense, the native English people inherits the conqueror’s language and the conquered people’s ghosts.

Germanic myth tends to be grand, explosive, end-of-the-world oriented (Ragnarök, heroic doom). Celtic myth is softer and sadder. Things fade, heroes fail quietly and the Otherworld doesn’t end the world - it overlaps it. Think of how English stories often end not with victory, but with walking away, the land reclaiming or time passing.

Welsh and Irish cultures retained Celtic worldview with language, story, and ritual intact. English culture retained Celtic worldview only at the level of habit and tone.

So English people feel watched but don’t say by whom, act politely without knowing why, sense boundaries without maps and inherit ghosts without names. It’s Celtic instinct filtered through Roman occupation, Anglo-Saxon rule, Norman administration and Protestant restraint.

What results is behavioural animism without theology. In looking toward Wales, Ireland and Scotland, England may find not instruction, but recognition - of instincts she never quite forgot.

There is an uncomfortable truth about the global stage that both the far left and the far right routinely avoid - for different reasons, but with the same result.

On one side are climate warriors: people who adopt veganism, attend protests and speak passionately about planetary collapse as a matter of principle. On the other are those who deny that human activity has any meaningful impact on the planet at all. These two positions appear oppositional, yet both miss a third angle entirely - one that quietly benefits from the conflict while positioning itself as the solution.

That angle is power itself.

More specifically, the way wealthy institutions use legitimate voices - especially indigenous ones - to cleanse their authority, stabilise their relevance and protect their profits.

The Strings We Pretend Not to See

There are strings being pulled beneath our noses and once again, we pretend not to notice.

Those who pride themselves on being “awake” often become so absorbed in moral self-congratulation that they fail to recognise a more disturbing reality: the faces we see on promotional posters and global panels are frequently no freer than the rest of us. They are constrained by the same systems, rewarded by the same incentives and pressured by the same structures of visibility and legitimacy.

Indigenous leaders, in particular, occupy a powerful symbolic role. They embody - especially in Western imagination - the image of humanity in right relationship with nature. Their presence signals continuity, wisdom, restraint and moral authority. And that symbolism is immensely valuable to institutions whose own histories are rooted in extraction and hierarchy.

This post addresses what happens when that symbolism becomes currency.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The claim here is not that indigenous leaders are lying, corrupt or malicious.

It is this: once elevated onto the world stage, indigenous leaders can become structurally constrained in the same way political and religious leaders are - rewarded for compliance, punished for refusal and preserved for usefulness rather than truth.

In other words, they can function as strategic actors within a system that ultimately does not serve their people, beliefs or land.

This does not require bad faith. It requires alignment.

How Power Maintains Itself

Global institutions, for example the World Economic Forum, have long been criticised for refining techniques of population management under the language of progress, sustainability and inclusion - all while preserving the hierarchies that keep them insulated at the top.

The far right often attacks these institutions rhetorically while simultaneously promoting rigid traditionalism and exclusionary values. The far left, meanwhile, frequently avoids sustained critique, either because the institutions appear aligned with progressive causes or because criticism risks undermining marginalised voices.

Both positions miss a deeper irony: oppressed groups are often elevated precisely because their visibility can be used to legitimise systems that remain fundamentally unchanged.

When representation becomes the proof of justice, justice itself becomes negotiable.

When Representation Replaces Accountability

Here is where the problem becomes most visible. For land-centred ethics to function, refusal must remain possible. That means saying no to compromise, withholding consent, allowing projects to fail if they do not serve the people or the land, or accepting invisibility rather than dilution.

But strategic relevance punishes refusal.

When a leader reaches the point where saying “no” risks loss of platform, walking away means disappearance, or silence feels more dangerous than compromise; then strategy has overtaken sovereignty.

At this stage, critique becomes framed as division, disagreement as disrespect and questioning as sacrilege. Sacred language is no longer guiding action - it is shielding status. This is not protection of belief; it is status defence through sacralisation.

Why This Benefits Institutions More Than Land

Symbolic inclusion allows powerful organisations to claim moral progress without relinquishing control. Consultation replaces consent. Ceremony replaces consequence. Presence replaces power.

Extraction may slow but it does not stop. Harm is delayed, not undone. Responsibility is diffused across panels and partnerships while the underlying system remains intact.

Indigenous leaders, in these cases, are not empowered to dismantle the system - they are positioned to stabilise it.

Conclusion: Familiar Flaws, Familiar Traps

Perhaps we are not as divided as media narratives suggest.

Indigenous leaders are not immune to the same pressures that shape Western politicians, executives or clergy. They are subject to the same gravitational pull of relevance, visibility and survival within a system that rewards performance over rupture.

This does not make them villains. But it does mean we should stop confusing presence with power - and stop treating representation as proof that something sacred is being honoured.

Land does not need legitimacy. Institutions do.

And any future that requires constant performance to sustain itself is not a future rooted in sovereignty - it is one rooted in containment.

I was meditating on merfolk yesterday, reflecting on their legends as they ripple over the surface of time, fascinating both ancient and modern people alike. Their origins are clouded in a mysterious mist that no mortal can navigate. There, they are shrouded in protection from prying eyes in their own world, yet vulnerable to interpretation in ours. But this universal filter holds little ground in the thoughtful study of these breathtaking beings.

In Celtic mythology, particularly in the traditions of Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and related Gaelic-speaking regions, mermaids aren’t a single uniform creature. They are a kinship of related beings with the most prominent being merrow (Irish) and selkie (Scottish, with overlaps in Irish lore), along with variants like the ben-varrey (Manx) or very occasional mentions of morgens in Welsh/Brythonic traditions.

These beings are deeply tied to the sea’s dual nature in Celtic coastal cultures: beautiful and alluring yet often dangerous, melancholic or tragic, reflecting the ocean’s role as both provider and destroyer for fishing communities.

But who are they really? I do not propose to know. I once wondered if they were drowned human men and women in Gaelic myth or those with an affinity or longing for the sea after their passing. Unlike Slavic rusalki or the curse of Mikladalur, where they are vengeful ghosts of the drowned, the stories in Celtic myth suggest an origin in the Otherworld. It maintains a strong sense of wonder and realisation that despite rationality, there truly are things out there in the watery depths that we do not understand until we learn to truly listen.

One’s True Nature and Home

The theme of the irresistible pull of one’s true nature and home is one of the most poignant and recurring elements in Celtic mermaid-like lore, especially with the selkie (seal-folk) and merrow (Irish sea-maidens). It is not an automatic invitation for mortal humans to relate to, but rather a lesson that no matter what we do to adopt the Otherworld as our own - shaping it to fit our ideologies - it will always have a mind of its own.

Selkies embody this pull most starkly. As shapeshifters who shed their seal skin to become human on land, they can form deep bonds - marrying usually by force, bearing children, even appearing content in human domestic life. Yet the sea remains their true home and core self. The stolen skin motif forces a selkie into a borrowed existence: she lives on land but her soul never fully settles there.

Modern interpretations see this as a symbol of honouring one’s authentic self or the soul’s yearning for freedom. The selkie’s departure isn’t cruel - it’s a return to wholeness. Her half-selkie children often inherit this liminal longing, feeling out of place on land and drawn to the shore, watching seals (perhaps their mother) from afar. But the modern interpretations fail to acknowledge the personhood of these water spirits, with the key factor often ignored: they did not start as humans.

Touched by the Otherworld

I must stress that this is about human proximity, not transformation. As we work to “decolonise” myth, we must understand that our personal longing for the sea must remain tame - not unfeeling, but restrained by humility, recognising the difference between kinship and claim. In essence, these Celtic tales warn against trying to “capture” or domesticate what is inherently free and elemental. They celebrate the sea as home for those born to it, reminding us that authenticity often demands painful but necessary returns.

However, on the other side of this argument, Gaelic coastal communities sometimes linked unusual women - those with a melancholy demeanour, frequent gazing at the sea or unexplained disappearances near water - to selkie/merrow influence, perhaps as distant descendants or “touched” by the Otherworld. And while no canonical tales feature purely human women reclassified as merrows due to sea-longing alone, the folklore is rich with the idea that sea-affinity - especially when profound and melancholic - could signal inherited merrow/selkie blood.

Living alongside the sea forms a relationship. Humans can form this as strongly as any other creatures that rely on the sea for survival.

What These Stories Ask of Us

Perhaps the enduring power of Celtic mermaid lore lies not in what it allows us to become, but in what it asks us to respect. These beings are not metaphors awaiting translation, nor mirrors for human longing. They are neighbours of the deep, born to a home we may love, fear and rely upon—but never fully enter. To truly honour them, we must learn not to claim the sea as ours, but to listen to it as something profoundly other.

There is a looming mechanical presence approaching - grinding, thundering, whispering. It is the sound of greed descending upon the wildest and most endangered places on Earth, encroaching on the fragile, hard-won optimism of those who defend the deep. It is a sound we must listen to carefully.

After years of negotiation, the High Seas Treaty has finally become legally effective - a treaty designed to protect the two-thirds of the ocean that lies beyond any country’s borders: the high seas. Until very recently, there was no comprehensive legal framework to protect biodiversity in these waters, nor meaningful oversight of deep-sea mining, industrial fishing, or bioprospecting.

One might assume this marks the creation of an impregnable, coral-crusted shield. But do not be fooled, fellow water whisperers. There are cracks in the armour and they demand close attention.

The High Seas Hustlers

While the treaty is now in force, it binds only those countries that choose to ratify it. Major ocean powers - including the U.S., China, the EU, Japan and Russia - retain the ability to delay or abstain, preserving strategic and economic flexibility while others shoulder the burden of restraint.

This kind of agreement is inherently fragile. It depends on voluntary sacrifice in a competitive world, leaving the door open for uneven enforcement - and for others to exploit shared resources while protections remain patchy.

At the same time, unflagged and loosely regulated vessels continue to operate with fewer constraints. These legal grey zones enable a quiet revival of maritime piracy, black-market extraction and environmental harm that slips easily between jurisdictions.

It is tempting, then, to call for stronger policing of the seas - after all, there is no global ocean police force. But pause here. This is where history complicates the instinct.

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The last era of effective maritime domination did not arise from collective stewardship, but from empire. The British Empire, often invoked as a precedent for global ocean control, acted in overt self-interest: blockading rival trade, enforcing imperial routes and escorting enslaved people to colonies. To recreate anything resembling a single dominant maritime enforcer today risks re-opening the door to imperial dynamics under a new name.

The world that once allowed one power to police the oceans no longer exists - legally, politically, or technologically. So what, then, is the alternative?

The Next Step

Among scientists, environmental organisations and some governments, the conversation is already shifting toward stronger, coordinated international enforcement of ocean law. This is rarely framed as a single, uniform “global ocean police force,” but rather as shared responsibility made real.

The High Seas Treaty exposes a familiar gap between rules on paper and reality on the water - and it is in that gap that power tends to pool.

Proposals focus on improved global monitoring and transparency, shared enforcement capacity and cooperation that extends beyond treaty text into actionable patrols, surveillance and accountability. In other words, protection that functions not just in principle, but in practice.

What Does It All Mean for Us Common Folk?

For the average person who enjoys sailing, fishing, or simply being at sea, the direct impact should be minimal - and in some cases, these protections may even safeguard existing freedoms. The High Seas Treaty is closely linked to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which remains the foundation for maritime rights and obligations.

This connection matters. Under UNCLOS Article 87:

“The high seas are open to all States, whether coastal or land-locked…”

This has long been interpreted to guarantee freedom of navigation on the high seas - a core principle of maritime law. It echoes the “freedom of the seas” doctrine articulated by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson during World War I:

“Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war…”

But Wilson’s words came with a caveat that is often overlooked:

“…except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.”

This exception is the unsettling part.

It establishes that collective international agreement can lawfully restrict access to the seas - for enforcement, for peacekeeping, or for punishment. History shows that in times of conflict, neutral rights are often ignored and “enforcement” in the name of peace is not always as benign as it claims to be.

The Watchful Eyes

The sea has long been a sentient and unforgiving presence. The riches she holds are vast and those growing desperate for resources above the surface are rarely shy about laying claim. Alongside the recent surge in ocean-focused documentaries and conservation campaigns, it is hard not to sense the closing in of powerful interests.

This is not an argument against conservation, nor against humanity’s deep and beautiful relationship with the sea. It is a scepticism - one that questions whether elite powers truly act in the ocean’s best interests, or whether they are exploiting our emotional connection to it.

By supporting conservation campaigns without scrutiny, we may unknowingly hand over the keys to the very forces capable of causing the greatest harm. The danger is not protection itself, but who controls it - and to what end.

The ocean deserves guardians, not gatekeepers. And that means we must remain ever watchful.

There is an elephant in the room whenever nature is discussed as a healing practice. This is not to deny nature’s restorative power - far from it. The issue is that we are expected to heal from a system that continually harms us, only to return to it and break again. Nature becomes a place of recovery rather than belonging.

The infrastructure we are born into is not designed for human wellbeing. It is designed for productivity, expansion and profit. The natural world is designed for our wellbeing - but recharging within it only prepares us to endure another cycle of burnout once we return to society. We are told this is healing. In reality, it is maintenance.

It is the equivalent of running a river dry, allowing it to refill over time and then draining it again - over and over - while calling the refill the solution rather than addressing why the river is being emptied in the first place. The problem is not a lack of recovery; the problem is a system that requires depletion to function.

This cycle resembles a business model built on a self-created illness, one that then profits from selling the cure. Burnout becomes inevitable and wellness becomes a market. Nature is reduced to a resource for recovery rather than a way of living and the source of the disease is carefully avoided in favour of endlessly managing its symptoms.

A recent news story about Little Wild Tribe, a Scandinavian-inspired outdoor nursery in Essex’s Hadleigh Country Park, illustrates this perfectly. Praised as an innovative “nature nursery” for young children (with glowing coverage highlighting its outdoor immersion, high staff ratios and benefits like improved wellbeing and problem-solving), it’s positioned as something special and exceptional. Yet forest schools have existed in the UK since the 1990s, inspired by Danish models from the 1950s. That we still treat full, daily connection to nature as a novel “discovery” or premium alternative reveals a deeper assumption in Western society: urban, indoor, mechanical living is the default - the only realistic way forward. Anything else is a charming outlier, not a norm we could and should reclaim.

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What has been lost in this framing is not merely a lifestyle choice, but an entire way of understanding our place in the world. Much of our ancestral knowledge - once taught through rhyme, ritual and daily practice - was deliberately erased by systems that sought control rather than connection. Some fragments survived through the rebellious teachings of rural cunningfolk, but even they were shunned, hunted and demonised for defying the new order. Since then, we have been trapped in a mechanical net, our descendants tasked with keeping the machine running, whether it nourishes them or not.

In animistic worldviews - where humans exist in constant dialogue with the natural world - this contradiction is obvious. Yet historically, those who could afford to reflect on nature, preserve it through writing or music and romanticise it from a distance were almost always the privileged. They had time, money and space to contemplate what others were too busy surviving to name. Nature became something to visit, admire and escape into - not something to live within.

A permanent cure would require dismantling the conditions that make burnout inevitable. That would mean fundamentally rethinking urban living, productivity and endless growth. Within systems that depend on profitability and scale, such solutions can never be fully endorsed. Instead, we are offered meditation apps, mandated wellbeing workshops, short retreats and nature walks - just enough relief to keep us functional.

This is not compassion. It is insult layered onto exhaustion.

We are told the solution lies in self-help and personal resilience, when what we are experiencing is our inner knowing crying out for release from a structure that is profoundly misaligned with human life. Burnout is not a personal failure. It is the system working exactly as designed.

There is, however, a fascinating tension within this story - something that feels like an instinctive pushback. Humans are endlessly creative when solving self-created problems - polishing the turd. At the same time, we are also trying to outrun nature entirely, severing ourselves from it rather than returning to it.

Some see this as the pinnacle of progress: transcendence through technology, the highest form of enlightenment. Some might even frame it as salvation, as the Kingdom of God realised through machinery.

I imagine something else.

A vast metal vessel, shaped like a giant winged, faceless human, ascending into space. Entirely self-sufficient. Powered by those who chose to merge with it. A machine that has become sentient, convinced it no longer needs the world that birthed it. It leaves behind a wounded - but slowly healing - planet Earth, tended by the few remaining human caretakers who refused anonymity and chose relationship over control.

The machine escapes.
The Earth remains.

Where will you be?

One of my chosen charities (alongside Sacred Headwaters and the Amphibian and Reptile Group) is the Marine Conservation Society. Their recent update brought to my attention a statistic that, while not entirely surprising, felt quietly revelatory.

According to a 2021 YouGov survey commissioned by the Mental Health Foundation, 65% of UK adults report that being near water - such as coasts, rivers, lakes and ponds - improves their mental wellbeing, making it their preferred way to connect with nature. The study was London-centred and cannot speak for the entirety of the UK, but even so, the number carries weight. Within one of the most urbanised, mediated environments imaginable, people are still drawn - overwhelmingly - to water.

This is often explained in terms of calm. Water soothes. Water reflects. Water slows the mind.

But this explanation falters when held too closely. Water is not inherently gentle. It is erratic, seasonal, destructive, relentless. It drowns cities, eats coastlines and rearranges entire ecologies without apology. And yet we continue to seek it out. Not just in safety, but in closeness.

From an animist perspective, this is not a paradox.

Animism asks us to abandon the idea that water is an object we observe and instead consider it as a presence we encounter. Not symbol. Not backdrop. Not resource. Presence. Something with agency, mood, memory and consequence. Rivers do things. Seas decide things. Rain arrives with intent, not because we summoned it, but because it had somewhere to be.

When people report feeling better near water, perhaps it is not because water is calming, but because it is responsive. It listens without language. It meets the body before the mind has time to translate the experience into metaphor. You do not have to understand water to feel recognised by it.

Our ancestors did not need surveys to know this. For hunter-gatherer-fisher cultures, water was not an abstract “environment” but a powerful other - capable of generosity and violence in equal measure. Survival depended on attention. On reading currents, tides, seasonal behaviours. On understanding when water welcomed you and when it did not.

This attentiveness naturally became relational. Water was spoken to. Appeased. Thanked. Appealed to. Not because it was “imagined” to be alive, but because it behaved as though it already was.

Modern Britain tells a different story about itself. One of ships and dominance, of controlling waterways, naming oceans, drawing lines across maps. Empire reframed water as something to be crossed, conquered, exploited. In doing so, it stripped water of voice and recast it as empty space between destinations.

But the body never fully accepted this version of reality.

Britons, perhaps more than many cultures, have lived with an unusually long severance from reciprocal relationships with land and water. Industrialisation and abstraction taught us to see landscapes as scenery and infrastructure rather than kin. And yet, despite this, something persists. A restlessness. A pull. A sense that being near water feels like returning to a conversation we once knew how to hold.

Reconnection, then, does not always arrive through belief or doctrine. It arrives quietly. Standing at the edge of a river and feeling as though something is aware of you. Walking a shoreline and sensing that the sea is not empty, not neutral, not indifferent. Feeling rain soak into skin and knowing - without articulating it - that this is not a one-sided exchange.

Britain is, after all, an island soaked through with water. Rain-fed. Tide-shaped. Bog-buried. River-veined. This landscape has never been silent. It has simply learned to speak softly, waiting for those who are willing to listen.

Perhaps that is why water continues to draw us back. Not because it represents peace, but because it offers relationship. A reminder that the world is not dead matter arranged for our use, but a network of living presences - some older than us, some patient, some increasingly wounded.

When the water whispers, it is not asking to be admired.

It is asking to be recognised.