You don’t have to live atop a tree in the forest to be a druid. You can fly even on the thirty-fourth story of a grey skyscraper. – Even in prison, because thoughts are free!
A very new variant of druids born from this realisation are the tekknodruids. They have learnt to listen to earths song in midst forests of steel and concrete. –
if you listen very carefully you can hear the heartbeat of life, even in the most fiendish desert of so-called “civilisation” of the dying American consumerism or Russian communism and their spinoff systems.
You can find it in the rising and ebbing of the traffic, the bustling airplanes, the constant hum of the moloch “city” with its ever red-glowing sky.
Even in the empty facial expressions of its inhabitants who hectically pursue the inherent necessities of their own illusions.
Seldom in midst of all those living dead you will encounter a calm, even-tempered person with bright eyes. Some of those neo- or tekknodruids prefer the silence of their own four walls – or they meditate in midst the most bustling crowd, conveying a sensible sphere of peace, regeneration and calmness. My own teacher Horst Martin was one of those.
Very often tekknodruids use not only incense, meditation and the inevitable druid-strolls in wild nature, but especially quiet or especially loud music. From classic (Bach, Händel) to Trance, Goa, Techno from Industrial to Gabber – to meditate (sic!!). What discerns them from other technofreaks and big-city-shamans is their consequent and definite abdication of any kind of narcotic drugs, the typic druidic kind openness of mind, drive for serious research and of course their unconditional love for all living beings.
Tekknodruids are very fussy about what they think though: The omnipresent cartel of media constantly tries its best forcing us to think about completely irrelevant things (fear, violence, sex and prominence).
The more intelligent of the tekknodruids neither let themselves be entangled in obscure conspiracy-theories, nor do they consume tabloid-media or glare into the goggle-box: Technodruids train and hone their media-competence following other urges than the satisfaction of animalic impulses: They intentionally search, hunt and find their information in books or the “interweb” (cg. Aantwoord “Enter the Ninja“). Be it on Wikipedia, Youtube maybe even Flipbook or other information-gateways. They are highly competent in distinguishing between idiotic trash in some corner of the web, the warble of some spin-doctored forum-droids and facts that interest them. Most of them do not read news or only the headlines – but filtered through a reliable aggregator.
A big danger in being a tekknodruid is to become a loner. Druids who pursue the way of the ancients alone, always risk a certain amount of insecurity or worse loss of reality. Therefore modern Druids often intentionally make use of social networks like FaceF**k (pun intended) or forums to exchange with like-minded people – and to meet them in persona if ever possible. Be careful though, there is a lot of nut cases drifting the whole wide web…
When they age and become more and more mature, most tekknodruids – that is if they don’t fall prey tho the glittering, glistening illusion of “civilisation” – become real druids in the ancient sense: Druids who feel the energy flowing through the earth. Druids that talk with animals, plants, the rocks and the brooks. They listen to the baseline of the wind and the soothing sound of falling rain, the majestic booming silence on a remote mountaintop and the song of a single cricket. Enlightenment in realization of a single falling drop of Water. They listen to the all-encompassing music of the one eternal and act in harmony. This is the essence of the way of the druid. Be it with 280bpm or in the thunder of crashing waves of the ocean.
“Go see the big city young one – but don’t stay there!”
Advice of a certain, well-known Hawai’ian Kahuna Huna…