Latest / Inner Alchemy with George Stuby – Trauma, Music and Plant Medicine / E 18 - Chris Park: From Acid House to Druid Elder

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E 18 - Chris Park: From Acid House to Druid Elder · Inner Alchemy with George Stuby – Trauma, Music and Plant Medicine

• George: Yeah, welcome to this episode today. And I'm super happy to be here together with Chris, Chris Park, in his home, which is here in the UK on the Oxfordshire and Wiltshire border, where he keeps bees, teaches crafts and native wisdom traditions, manages a small woodland and raises children. Quite a few things. And he works as an artist, a musician, storyteller, celebrant, writer, tutor, and Eco builder to name a few occupations. Yeah, I'm really happy we are here together today, Chris. Chris: Yeah, yeah, good to see you, George. Thanks for coming over and, you know, it's always fun, isn't it, to do a podcast, I think, or to have a chat. George: A hundred percent. Chris: And, yeah, hope you make a good one. George: Yes. And Yeah, I've seen you at at different events here in the UK, like for example, Madison Festival a few times. And and and also there you had a lot of different offerings. Chris: Yeah. George: And I I joined one of your offerings on the on a place called the Sacred Glade where you did like a beautiful sound tapestry with a harp and and and and in my language used like hyp hypnotic or hypnotic language hypnosis yeah yeah guided people in a really deep relaxation with it. Yeah that was super beautiful. Chris: Yeah, I'm glad you were there. George: and yeah I'm curious to hear a bit more What different things in your life led you to do what you're doing today? And to this big variety of different offerings? Chris: I guess we could start at the beginning, before the beginning. I was never baptized or christened. And my parents, was just early seventies, and my parents were like, had that ethos of, I've got one brother, of letting us find our own way in life. And they didn't go to church. Not even my grandparents were churchgoers. Mum's mum was Welsh and my dad's dad was Scottish, but there's a big sort of culture of being English as well. And I up in the Chiltern Hills surrounded by woodland. I quite a conventional upbringing, but my grandparents had big orchards and there's this kind of Celticity from the Scots and the Welsh and then the crafts and a lot of growing of food, organic veg. grandmother spinning and knitting and dying and weaving and all those things. And growing the plants, my parents bonded mainly in the garden. That was where you saw them really sort of in harmony, growing stuff and dad had an allotment as well. He worked with wood. He was like a cabinet maker. He also retained firemen. And my mom sort of did all sorts of odd jobs and eventually became a podiatrist. And they just encouraged us, you know, we had a good Life, had an open fireplace in the house that we grew up in. We would often go and walk around the countryside. So there's a love of nature right from the beginning. can hear It's a real love of nature. George: A lot of craft. Chris: Yeah, nature and crafts and arts. And my brother was ill quite a lot as a child with ear problems. So he'd often been in hospital and my mother would stay with him, my dad'd be at work. And so I was sometimes brought up by my grandparents. So I've got that kind of older ethic of You know, growing the food, managing the orchard, making the food in a house that was all wooden, floored and, you know, with open fireplaces and cherry logs and the lovely smoke of the cherry logs and candles in the evening and brass and copper and stone, know, sort of rather than a 1970s house, know, sort of had a lot of formative years. in their house and their gardens and ponds and big old trees. And yeah, we'd walk up to the pond up the road and back again. My granddad's mother, he would tell me when he was a boy, they used to walk up to a well called Stump's Well where there was clean water and once a day to fetch water. So going up to the Chiltern Hills, if you don't know the Chiltern Hills, it's this chalky long stretch of hills. running from the Goring Gap and Henley and Marlow and Mednam and down that way all the way up through High Wickham and Hemel Hempstead and up to Luton way. And it's quite densely wooded and it's chalk and there are springs around the edges. yeah, so I went to school, did a degree and ended up doing a degree in fine art sculpture. Because I liked art at school, I did A-level at art, physics and history, but they let me sit in on the, what did they call it back then, religious education or something? RE, they called it RE A-level, just because I was interested in spirituality and religion. But I was never given a religion, I was never given a dogma. And I'd never really felt English, if you know what mean, growing up. I didn't really relate to the Englishness, but I didn't feel part of the culture, but I felt part of the nature. I felt part of the hills and the trees and the saw pits and the escarpments and the springs and the streams and the rivers and the cherry orchards and the foxholes and the birds. around my grandfather's orchard, you know, deer skulls would be hanging. they had, you know, our biggest family event of the year was this giant bonfire that he would make and we'd light it every, every round the 5th November, every bonfire night. And all the home brews would come out and he was a brewer and all the old stories would come out. And then, you know, my mum would see ghosts and talk about, we'd talk about spirits and, know, cause it'd be Halloween sort of time. And that was... And then at the end, once the fire had died down, my grandfather would come with his big pitchfork and sort of stick it in and whoosh, it'd spill out all these embers up into the air. And that was it. Might have a toffee apple or something. That's kind of like the main event. And of course, you know, we celebrated Christmas, we did that and we used to get Easter eggs. But that was all we lived in. So I was... I'd say I was getting into paganism through, through in secondary school. Yeah. I got into heavy metal. A friend of mine gave me this, this, this cassette of like Iron Maiden or something. then Deep Purple, machine head by Deep Purple, Deep Purple, Deep Purple, you know, Black Sabbath and all these different things. So I started to grow my hair and I started to grow, like I think my first festival was 14 years old and it was like the Monsters of Rock Festival. and I think I smoked my first joint in the back of the car on the way there. And then, so it becoming sort of, I this influence of all the, yeah, I was born, all the kind of, all the kind of that slightly sort of occult pagan sort of influences were sort of feeding in as well, as well as the family sort of folky customs and. then the acid house scene sort of came. So I just sort of transitioned quite easily from the heavy metal to the acid house, because I had the long hair. So I was already halfway there. And a friend of mine gave me a cassette saying, listen to this. So there's a theme developing, there? Ian gave me this cassette of all the early acid house and house music stuff. That's amazing. So I ended up going to like Yikes at Slough Centre. then from there, they sort of little local. raves to these bigger raves and got into that scene. then but still, you know, me and a gang of friends would still like head out to the hills at weekends and go, we might spend all night, know, in the summertime cycling around the hills. We might take some magic mushrooms and just go through the night or some acid or something, go through the night, you know, and then watch the sunrise and, you know, in the summer holidays from a tree or sitting in a tree or something like that, you know, there's So there's all that going on as well. then I was doing A levels and I went to do an Art Foundation course. And I got. around me. I think I must have been 15, 16, and a friend up the road, he had a girlfriend from Chinna and her family were witches. So I knew there were these people around. Wow. And then going to, then I eventually did a degree in fine art sculpture. Yeah. And there I was getting in, on the Art Foundation course, actually, I was getting into all the labyrinths, symbolism, visiting parts of, visiting labyrinths and getting into. old symbols and mysticism of British Isles and my friend. Yeah, my friend gave me this book called The Western Way, know, and all these meditations to do, native British deities and European, Western mystic traditions and things like that. So from quite a young age, I had this sort of garnering all these different meditations and practices. And then a friend of mine, I think I joined the Pagan Federation, started going out to Stonehenge and Avery and visiting all the local... the hills and the sacred sites and the long barrows and the rural rights and all these places just heading out to these places. Plus, going up to London for club labyrinth on a Friday night or whatever, know, 2008, and all these kind of, you know, when the house music was sort of getting more darker and grungier and harder, still doing all of that. And there was a sort psychedelic element to that. And then I went to... Yeah, so the art and then the art colleges are just becoming more expressive. So all through that period, I was slowly grabbing these dreadlocks in front of my face and got quite introverted. And so, and I can continue that kind of that art college really, you can just really introvert into your studio and make whatever you want and get inspired by whatever you want. And I getting into, I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, know, groundbreaking, I it must have been written in the 60s. environmental text about pesticides. And I was involving that with bit of, with kind of pagan themes and making things out of glass and wood and metal and we have foundry and... I'm rambling, but so I went through this art phase of art college and there was a, yeah, that was great, wonderful, but just coming out the end of that, it just felt like, cause this was a bit selfish, you know, just spending all your time researching and creating and then people just wander around with a plastic glass and drink some wine and then that's it. What good has that done for the world? Might've me some good, might've been a bit of therapy for me, know, of delving into these. things and then understanding and becoming more involved. And I had a girlfriend who was really into animal rights and anti vivisection and veganism and all those sorts of things. Another friend who was really political, we were going on anti-poll tax marches and we do something. So got into a kind of, yeah, got cultured and educated and into these different movements, I suppose. Activism, George: So like activism. Chris: yeah. And then... And then all that finished and I sort of then went back to my parents' house and sort of reviewed my life. I was offered an MA at Chelsea, but I didn't want to do it. I thought the art world was just a bit pretentious. And I thought, I don't want to do that. I want to do something real. I've met a friend Merlin who introduced me to Wales and Snowdonia and... yurt making and things like that and basket tree and those things. And so I wanted to do something that was more earthy rather than. Yeah. So I ended up living in Greece and working for a conservation project. in between that I was training with the international rescue corps. So my dad was a retained fireman as well as a cabinet maker. Through that he became a volunteer for this search and rescue team. And I got interested in that because I'd always been, you know, a kid helping them pack to go off on missions. So I got, when I was old enough, 18, I started training. So I was training all the rope work and climbing and tunneling and, and cropping and shoring and boat work and, and hazardous environment training and advanced first aid and using chainsaws and thermal imaging cameras and all this stuff, thermic lances and abseiling out of things into things. So I got trained up in all of that, you know, being put into military stress positions and training at military camps and deep underground in the forest of Dean and all sorts of places on the islands in the middle of the Firth of Forth and strange places. So there was that, I was getting this good, don't know, competence of training in survival, I suppose, as well. Yeah, rescue and first aid. Yeah. George: Out there in the Chris: And teamwork, yeah. Being in the elements. So we had these 15 person teams that could just mobilize and be anywhere in the world. Could be taken anywhere in the world and just be self-sufficient. bit like a military, a small military unit. We came up with that kind of ethos and we had this ability to just take 15 of us from it. We could be anywhere in the world, set up our base camp, go out and do missions. George: Of the grid. Yeah. Chris: Yeah, like off grid. But I also had this big environmental element of what I was learning and believing and plus the paganism and I was being trained in witchcraft as well. so there was this love of the goddess and nature. So this 15 person team was kind of dependent on diesel and generators and chainsaws and ration packs and resources. It just, it was great. know, and we were united to save life, but it just felt like. not that many lives were saved, even though the heart was there, it was more of a political sort of thing to kind of send a team to a country who's in a state of emergency. But I know the cost of heart was there, people were saved, lives were saved, but often people just, I mean it's of value as well, finding dead casualties is just as valuable, it, for the relatives. If you don't find one, then it can be awful. And so there's a... There's all of that. And I'd been in Greece doing this sea turtle protection and like my whole life changed, I would say, because suddenly I was in this colorful, warm, and I was working with all the pantheons of Greece, know, Pan and Aphrodite. So into the British pagan tradition, suddenly I was in Greece and living on a beach and had these long dreadlocks and getting a tan and... and driving a boat and George: I can totally imagine you in. Chris: working with sea turtles and educating tourists and training up volunteers. He's training up mostly marine biology students and working with the turtles in the seasons. And I learned so much about the turning of the night sky and would tell the time with the turning of the Northern stars and the... and learned so much about the phases of the moon and the sea turtles themselves and all the marine life. It was great. I stayed for six months. I was a young man and I came home with like a kidney stone and an STD and that was the most painful, the kidney stone was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Because I was still young, still drinking a lot and smoking and maybe not looking after my body and not drinking enough water. And so it was wonderful, but my life became much more colorful and my art suddenly became colorful. I was drawing colorful pictures of sea turtles rather than all the kind of slightly darker sort of stuff all about pesticides and cannibalism and all those other things I was doing at art college. sort of everything just got brighter and lighter. And it came back from there. I started an MA in contemporary religion. I've done a degree, the fine art degree. and I'd been away and done these kind of conservation projects. I'd done something that's sort of immediate results. George: the the the rescue building Chris: So yesterday, we have... George: you mentioned in in in a way it's like really hands on Chris: Yeah, the art world was quite abstract and potentially as I felt. these coming out of that, it was going into like hands on things of searching rescue and, and, and the conservation projects, environmentalism with a good ethos. And I could see immediate results. And I came back from that and I felt, and I was, I think somewhere along the line I started training in Druidry as well. I've met some Druids and they were So was trained in witchcraft and that was great and brilliant and powerful and strong and wonderful and sexy. when I met the Druids, they just seemed to be that bit healthier. So for some reason they just seemed to be George: Have you Chris: more together, like mentally, physically, expressively. was just this of shiny vibrance about them. And, you know, witchcraft is brilliant, but it can be a little bit unholy and vile sometimes. And the Druidry was just, plus with my Celtic ancestry, kind of felt, yeah, this makes sense. And so I did, started an MA in contemporary religion and did modules on paganism and started writing about the witchcraft experiences I had. But from a, you know, from a phenomenological point of view and then did projects on sacred space and began to go around and look at all the springs around me and the rivers and got into sacred waters. And I wrote a little book actually just after that time. called The Sacred Wire about how we relate to water. This is like, have been in 2002 or something. I wrote this little book. no, is after. Gosh, there's so much to say. So there's all these formative stuff happening. then, so was training in Druidry then, I did this project and I went to live on an organic farm in Wales. Some friends invited me to live on an organic farm to convert an old... dairy farm into a permaculture project in a box scheme. So I was doing that as well, which is brilliant. And I was giving myself ancestral lands in Wales. And I can't remember the chronology, but also I was doing the Druidry and training as a bard and then an ovate and coming to this farm for Druid camps. So it'd be living off grid on a camp, cooking on a fire, putting ceremonies together and seasonal festivals together. setting up 10 days and on it for 10 days and taking it down for 10 days. So four times a year. So spending a lot of time living with a fire and living outdoors in community, ceremony. And that was great as well. And it was on organic farms over here and over there. And then through that, was Professor Ronald Hutton that came along. He used to come along frequently. And he said there's a project happening for people who want to volunteer to live as Iron Age people. You know, it's like ancient Celts would. Yeah. They're full Druids. And I became interested in paganism and Druidry as a native environmental wisdom tradition, not as something that was kind of trying to revive what was going on 2000 years ago. So I hadn't really got that, but suddenly I ended up on this project, living as an Iron Age person in round houses. with conical thatched roofs, cooking on a fire. Our house was heated by the fire and lit by the fire. Every morning milking goats, because I'd been a goat herd in France, so I knew about goats. Yeah, that's another thing I forgot to mention. And then I was making cheese, we made charcoal, made pottery, made baskets, did a kind of little sweat house thing. We were cooking. all the time and butchering animals. I just came out of a vegan housing cooperative, know, that housing cooperative with like Roger Hallam and people like that had started it. And so I had this kind of whole ethic of, you know, veganism and environmentalism and not flying and reducing driving and cycling and getting trained. And suddenly I was in this situation where, actually it seems to be more ethical just to not go anywhere. And we didn't go anywhere for seven weeks. And to eat what's available like like your father, just had this whole kind of change of ethics. We were butchering rams and... It was George: Yeah. Chris: very different. Yeah, it was very different from... But we had peas and beans and milk from the goats. And we weren't keeping peas, we were giving honey. And that seemed just... That just taught me something. I'd already carved a mead horn. So I was already into the honey and mead as a druid and a witch and making the libations and drinking the wine and cakes at the end of the ceremony and having this... reverence for the sort of for the native medicine I suppose. the part in the back of my mind I was thinking, empires rise and fall. climate's changed, it's good to take your shoes and socks off and dig your feet a bit deeper into the place you're in and into the elements there. this living in this Arnage village was that experience, I felt this real, I thought I was quite a natural guy, but I this real natural coming home experience that I've never felt before. Seven weeks of never getting in a car. Seven weeks of never looking at the world through a window. Seven weeks of not being on a phone or a screen or any device whatsoever. George: Maybe with like fire and like elements and yeah. Chris: And 17 of us to begin with. George: Also a lot of community then, yeah. Yeah. Chris: And then the highlights and the lowlights of community also and everything we were learning there. And yeah, it was incredible. Absolutely. We made iron. We were given iron ore from the Frosted Deen, from the Clearwell Caves in the Frosted Deen. we made a furnace and bellowed it. Ron and Brenda, bless them. They were the kind of these two Smiths. and I just gelled with them and I was there as a druid, if you like. So even when we together, we did a ceremony renewing their wedding vows and we full moon rights. It became a documentary. The director, he had this dream about me strapped down in a straight jacket onto a table, screaming, never find a playground like this again. You know, it was like, was, you know, and in a way I've been trying to recreate that ever since somehow, you know, my life when I began teaching, building Iron Age roundhouses, teaching about the ancient Celts and about brush crafts and natural and primitive technologies and storytelling is a primitive technology and folk music. yeah, I realized how important that is and how you can thrive in that situation. George: Beautiful. And that's like The way I hear it is all it's also connected to like the the druid that you meant to being a druid. Yeah you you mentioned the overts over eight Chris: OVA- George: and the bars. So may maybe it would be helpful to define that a bit more for people who don't know much Chris: Absolutely. George: about it. Chris: Okay. Yes, I've mentioned the word druid. And 2000 years ago, the priests and priestesses of these aisles were known as druids. And they're also judges and doctors and healers and ceremonialists and astronomers and prophets and poets and sages and multifunctional, administrative, well as spiritual. And as I mentioned, the contemporary Druid order, the order of Bards of Ancient Druid, it's inspired by ancient Druidry and by the fact that they upheld peace and the fact that they celebrated the elements and the stars and the seasons and these agricultural festivals. But we're not trying to revive, we're not trying to live in the past, we're trying to be here and now and honour the spirit of this time. And we don't know exactly what they did and contemporary Druidry has many other influences from what you find in meditation, what your direct source, the the primary source is nature and the goddess. There's no dogma, so you don't have to believe in the goddess. You could just be, this is nature and that's me. It's not a religion. So you could even be an atheist and be a Druid. But there's this, contemporary Druidry is this... right at the heart of contemporary Druidry is this force called the Awen, which comes from the Brythonic strand of Druidry, which is on, know, of like Welsh Cornish and Breton is a Brythonic side. And this Awen is this word which means flowing spirit and the blessings of the mighty ones and ingenuity and inspiration. And that's something you're attuned to in the bardic grade of Druidry, that you get initiated into that. And then when you step into the ovate grade, it's a strange word, know, ovate is literally a shape. Yeah. But it was also means to a seer. It's like the grade of the seer. So in the bardic grade, you set the foundation of the wheel of the year in a circle of the seasonal festivities and you tune to the hour and the bardic force comes flowing and you work with the elements inside and outside, metaphorically and physically, spiritually, and then you weave those together and integrate those and balance those and the hour is a spirit which flows through it. And then you go to the ovate grade, which is a bit deeper into the forest. And you get into the, really stuck into the work of ancestry and seership. And you become receptive to the intuitive and to the healing arts. That grade is sort of symbolized by a cauldron, if you like, and the U tree. The bardic grade is the birch tree and the ovate grade is the U tree. It's all under the aegis of the U tree, which is this. this wonderful symbol of power and darkness, but also health and this depth of the forest and depth into the ancestors and into the earth energies and star lore and tree lore and animal lore and herb lore and all that kind of stuff. It's like the kind of witchy, sort shamanic grade of Druidry is the ovaite grade. And then once you've worked through that, And it can be the grade of rupture and repair and chaos and melting things down in the forge and being reborn out the other side of that. You come into the druid grade, which is the grade of, I guess, the stepping into the eye of the sun and being present in your community, teaching, hosting ceremonies and picking up your wand and directing energy. So you're sort of balanced, you're sort of tempered and humbled and... and bow down to the goddess in the ovaid grade. And you pick up your wand and then become more active, know, sort of receptivity and activity if you like. George: Yeah. So we moving into like tea teaching and reading and sharing. Chris: Teaching and sharing. and being more social and more... Yeah, you become like the tree of the druid graders of the oak tree. you literally become an oak tree for your community. Like a pillar of the community. The idea is that then cast a nourishment of acorns and teachings and shade and strength and gravitas and rootedness. you've still got your roots in the darkness and the deep waters, got your branches in the light and your present and teaching and sheltering and giving. George: What I know. Chris: On that note, here's some birch sap mead. George: So your helmet made by you. Chris: Yes, tap from a birch tree here and I keep bees here. delicious batch of birch sap. So it's no water here, just birch sap and honey. Wow. And a few herbs. So, yakhida, selenji va, wassail. that's so good. It's so nourishing, isn't it? like food. Food for the body. Honey is credibly nourishing, the Birksap too. George: Mm. Wow. So it's honey and birch sap and then you let it ferment. Right? That's what you Chris: Yeah, that's Wow. About a gallon of birch sap too. About four pounds of honey. that's the last of that batch. That's George: Thank you so much. Chris: amazing. Every time I make a batch like that, I think I'm going to save a bottle. Just never do. I need to kind of someone, I need to do that. Just give them to someone else. Save this. Don't let me have it. Because they just age, you know that's amazing, but they just age and get better and better and smoother and smoother. So in a year's time that'd be so much more sumptuous. George: Amazing. Hm. Wonderful. Yeah. It's also a wonderful way to connect to to the land, right? It's like through So like fo foo food and drink for that really comes from from from the land. Yeah. Also after that medicine that they had is kombucha that was made from the oak trees, on the medicine on the on raising estate where medicine is held. Chris: Great, yeah. Was that Tom? George: Sure who made it, but they had it on a few bars and really, really great. Yeah. Yeah, so when I when I reflect from on what I heard from you, Christian, I hear like that you You really had this incredible journey with so many different influences. Yeah. and somehow all those influences resemble around art and music, s different subcultures, yeah. different spiritual traditions. Yep. But free from like organized religion. Chris: Yeah. George: And different ways of working with your hands, so to speak, or working with like very earthy things. and on that way, Yeah, w when you shared, you also had like many things coming up and I didn't think about that, or there was actually this before, so there's so many different things that you have experienced and that you're now bringing together in in what you share. And From all of those things, like what do you feel is for you right now most significant to teach? Chris: Significant. You're just talking about food and I think it's really significant to just keep on building those connections, whether it's growing your own food, making some of your own clothes, making your own music, making your own ceremonies, making your own spirituality, religious practice. making your own medicines, whatever, yeah, making your own education. think those connections, making your own knowledge of the stars and the plants and the herbs and the animals around you, making your own cheese and having goats or garden or whatever it might be, just... stop flying around the world and settle down. know, I have friends that yearning for connection and I see their lifestyle is like zipping here and zipping there and zipping there and yearning for connection. And I think, I mean, I've got to own, probably little, you know, I'm ranting a little bit about it because I'm sort of maybe slightly envious taking my life. be more exciting if I was flying around the world quite a lot. But I see there's this yearning for connection. And it can be so simple and it can seem boring. There's that lovely saying, if you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a night, get into bed with someone. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. If you want to be happy for life, get a garden. That seems a bit boring. But it's just sustainable, regenerative relationship that you'll have with the land and it's productive. And I said that to Satish Kumar and he sort of with a sparkle in his eyes, said, I married a gardener. So he sort of ticked all the boxes, I guess if they do drink a bit now and again. It's just, will we do that until we really have to? You know, it's like necessity is the mother of invention. Will we slow down? Will we take the foot off the accelerator? Will we do the less exciting, wonderful, stimulating, sensational things and just do a bit of gardening unless we need to? You know, I'm not sure if we will because we love the sensation. love the... And something I learned in the Iron Age of Inner is actually that... Just simple things like modern, our contemporary lifestyle is full of so many different colours, so many different colours. And living in an Arnage village, you don't have all these sensational colours, you don't have all these sensational tastes, don't have all these sensational musics, you don't have all these sensational experiences. So you sort of shed all those skins and you just have these colours, you just have these natural dyes and you just have these tastes and these foods. And you just have this gray sky and you just have this local woodland. But you start to notice the small things. You start to notice the beauty of that gray sky, you know, and all the different colors and movements and shapes of it. You start to notice the weather wisdom that your body's accruing. So you notice the subtle changes in yourself that when you're not, when we're not zipping around in our cars all the time and planes all the time and looking at the world through a window and looking at the world through a screen, we're just. in the world, always knowing the wind direction and the weather and the temperature and the humidity and the dampness of the air and the state of the fire and whether that needs feeding or the grinding of the bread and the... there's just some... Yeah. I mean, it's strange isn't it? Because there's so much goodness about the world. This worldview we have through the internet and through emails and through... We have garnered this... and this sense of understanding of each other culturally. And that's priceless, absolutely priceless. You would never get that living in an Arnage village, not traveling more than a mile radius. You'd never get that. You'd have prejudice and fear of other cultures. that's an absolutely wonderful thing. So how do we blend the two together? How do we blend this amazing worldview and ability to communicate and travel and and understand with the taproot, and we'd not lose the taproot, but also send out the connection, the branches and tendrils. Because as much as indigenous cultures were amazing and wonderful, they still had prejudice and fear of other cultures and therefore conflict. So that's exciting to think about how we're going to do that. George: Super exciting, yeah. And I feel like something I witnessed for myself and I've seen that with many clients and people I I I I I witness in ceremonies, in plant medicine ceremonies, is that Tomorrow People we get in touch with their emotions and with themselves and the the more they they shed like old imprints, automatic imprints, the the the more sensitive their system becomes again. Because often when yeah, we exp when we experience a lot of like difficult things and when we are really far away from our emotions, we are really numb. Yeah. And we need a lot of impact to to feel something and to experience something. and for example, it's quite typical that at the beginning people need a lot of medicine to feel it. And often when when we stay in this path, over time we need less and less medicine to have an even more colourful or in Enriching experience. I just sat out with someone on a retreat who who said, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm getting married shortly after this retreat. So I have a lot of things going on and I I will take way less psilocybin than I would usually do to take and keep keep it a bit more easy. Right. And then he's after he had like a deeper experience. than the year before, where he took like five, six times of what he took this time. And was like totally blown away by that. And was like, wow, how is that possible that I've experienced so much? But for me, I I know this is because he got more sensitive and his system became more open and more receptive. And all of a sudden you need way less stimulation. Yeah. And I feel that's something that's really important for for right now. Because if we keep on going like that and We all need like or we all think we need This amount of like super intense and and and mind blowing food and this amount of like designer backs and all of this like really intense stuff. it it's not looking good for consumer as Chris: assume. George: a collective. Yeah, it's consumer is yeah if we if if if we all keep on going consuming so much and and needing that to feel an impact on us, I think that that's a very dangerous place to be. So I feel this becoming more sensitive again is super important. Chris: We have to allow ourselves to be bored. George: Also it's Chris: sometimes being bored is like, not so exciting, not so stimulated, not so sensational. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The plant medicines and all those, you know, the psilocybin, things, can, if we're in this state that is quite bolstered because we're having to live in city or a high stress job or whatever kind of stuff, we might need a bit of that just to kind of break down all the armour. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But then... once the doors have been opened, we can use the handles ourselves. We don't need anything to open the doors for us. George: I agree. Yeah. Chris: so, often we'd say about ayahuasca that it's a gateway drug to nature. It's a gateway drug to the forest. It helps people realize that the woodland and the natural world is wonderful and vibrant and brilliant. But once you've realized that, you don't really need to take it all the time. George: I agree. Chris: In the Druid tradition, when I joined the Order of Bajavats and Druids, there's quite a big culture of, and I would hope still is, of people that are not relying on any stimulants whatsoever. You can get to these places through the practices, through the meditations, through the ceremonies and attuning to the poetic omniscient, poetic force and all those things. You can get to these... blissful and connected states, not using any substances, just what you've got. So that's within the Druid tradition. And in the witchcraft traditions, as it's saying, if what you're looking for, can't find within yourself, you never find it without. George: We should let it out. Chris: that's important to know. In the Druid work, we develop this adeptness in the other world, which you might say is the psychedelic realms that you might journey in when you're... taking a substance. So we develop an adeptness there without a substance, just through visualization and a competence within this. We call it the inner grove. You've got this inner world. When I first joined Obod, I was a bit away with the fairies. I was practicing the witchcraft and running in the woods and I was of celebrating nature, but sort of spitting at culture from a distance. And then I came into Druidry. you know, with the long dreadlocks in front of my face. And I came to the druid room and I had to sort part the dreadlocks and look around at this circle of bards and druids and ovates. And I sort of found my voice and found my sort of music and expression. And it really put my feet on the ground, actually. Yeah. George: Beautiful. Chris: And rather, sort of, maybe too much in the other world and not enough in this world. it sort of, so it's a modulatory, it has a modulatory effect on you, the way the elements are balanced and. you some of us are too earthy and we need a bit of fire and a bit of otherworldliness and some of us are too airy and academic and up here and abstract and we need a bit of grounding and getting in touch with our hearts and our emotions and some of us are too emotional. And we could do a little bit of, you know, sort of fireiness and passion and enthusiasm, which is sort of, you know, whatever. Yeah, it's great. Anybody? listening or watching who's the least bit interested in the order of Bibles, Aves and Druids, just start the course, you know, and it's initiatic and that's wonderful in itself. And if you're not interested in Druidry, then do something else, you know, but so it's a doing of it that's really important. Whatever traditional work you're interested in or called to, especially if it's initiatics and you go through this kind of, not necessarily an oath, but you go through, you go through this gateway to sort of step into a deeper sense of purpose and awareness, which is empowering and revealing and inspiring and challenging and disruptive in a positive way. George: Wonderful. And When you said challenging, I I wondered like what has been something that has been f challenging for you on this path? Chris: So many things, so just that moment of sort of brushing the dreadlocks away from my face and feeling shy or introverted and finding my ability to speak and listen in a sort social ceremonial kind of space. then feeling the confidence to pick up a musical instrument and learn it and then feeling the confidence and then have the competence to sort of play it. publicly and breaking out of my shell and becoming confident and like self-love and self-worth and all those things that I didn't necessarily have when I was younger. That's a challenge, to believe in yourself. George: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's also I I see that. I I can totally relate that for my own journey and I can also see it in in in many, many clients. And Yeah, something I become more and more aware is that one fundamental belief that's that's connected that almost everyone carries is like a version of I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. Right. Yeah. And then it's really important to work with that. And and you mentioned f earlier this the saying that you know you you cannot find in the outside what you can't find in yourself. Yeah. And I feel that's really also true for like this belief of I'm not good enough. Because if we we believe that on a if we believe that internally then nothing in the outside world will create enough. Yeah. And it's this endless consumption and endless striving for more for for goals or for like bigger and faster and and more shiny. Which is ultimately a dead end. And I feel the earlier we we see that in life the the better. Because I feel it's very tragic to only if at all, maybe realise that very late in life. Chris: Yeah. George: Or maybe not realise it at all i in a lifetime. Chris: Yeah. I'd like to add that even just the first word, I, could be like a kind of mis-footing in a way. That whole statement, I'm not good enough, is quite narcissistic, isn't it? It's quite preoccupied with I as well. So there's that. Just suddenly, the narcissism can be there as, it's just a preoccupation, whether it's a preoccupation of not being good enough or preoccupation with being good enough. It's a preoccupation with I, with myself. So there's that as well. George: That's very interesting. Chris: to shed the preoccupation with the self and to be just to be with the within and without with the sense of belonging. yeah, so I guess I'm talking about belonging. I'm talking about health as well, essentially, think about the heart of the Druid tradition, you could say is art and health. And probably three, we like collections of three things, maybe we'll find another thing, is right at the heart of the Druid tradition is the arts, the expression of the song and the poem. And often when a great artist makes a work, they don't feel like it's coming from themselves. They feel like it's coming through the self, through the I. So you kind of get to this, again, the true Auan is this poetic omniscient force. So it has this omniscience, this all knowledge that is beyond us. We can never own the all knowledge, but we can be a part of it tap into it. Yeah, I suppose. this game with a sort of deep philosophy. Maybe we are all knowledge anyway, but we're just an aspect of it. So there's that dissolution of self can happen sometimes. George: Yeah. Chris: the, so, yeah, so right at the heart is that, is the art and the hour and whether it's literally the creative force of making love and creating a child, which you've done recently, or whether it's the guitar that you play or whether it's a podcast that you're making, but it's that creativity, that creative part of yourself. That's at the heart of the traditional. And I would say health is there as well. It has this... is seeking and uplifting and perpetuating and integrating and modulatory effect of health and whether that's social health, being in ceremony people, being in a druid grove or being in your community, whether that's personal health, eating well, and whether it's environmental health, looking at your local river, looking at your local forest or your local... waste management and looking at those things, environmental health. So there's a sense of health there as well. So it's got the oen, the flowing nested kind of, the health and it's got this. It's this otherworldliness as well. So talking about, about, Duryodhi put my feet on the ground, but also paradoxically, also stretching into the other world and you have this otherworldly grove of trees that you visit in your meditations and you have a guide there and you develop this competence of feeling and seeing and sensing that place. And there's a lovely saying, happens in the other world? What happens in this world happens in the other world first. So you can see that, you might believe that that is the other world, you're meeting deities and guides and spirits, or you might believe that it's just an aspect of your psychology. So there's no, you don't have to believe in fairies and spirits and gods and deities and elemental beings. You can be a complete atheist agnostic and there's a scale of science and sorcery. and how it blends. But there's no dogma in the Juhu tradition. You don't have to subscribe to this deity. But there's a, which is wonderful and freeing, but it means a discipline is down to you. George: Yeah. Chris: And it's a, and you can be, you can be a Buddhist and be a Druid, can be, you know, a Christian and be a Druid. It's not a religion, it's a philosophy, it's a way, it's a tradition, which is refreshing. And there's an element of equality about it. There's whoever you are, whatever your ancestry. ability and artistic abilities, whatever your accreditation or whatever your, however big or small your bank account is, there's an equality that everyone is equal in spirit. There's a belief about that and a belief of upholding peace. And of course the love of nature. But there's this otherworldly element to it. There's this place that you go and... sanctuary and seek inspiration and get guidance there as well. It's wonderful. If you're interested, just get on to it at www.druidry.org. This is the spirit of this time. This is the way we communicate and share information through these electronic ways. But you can get posted these booklets called GWIRS, which is a Welsh word, which means lesson. And it actually relates to the Guérez, which is a ray of sunlight. So it relates to other things. you might learn a bit of Welsh or Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic and Breton. But wherever you are in the world, people are attracted to Druid for different reasons. Generally because you've got some Celtic ancestry somewhere along the line, or because you might be living in Scotland or something, or living on the Isle of Man or whatever. might, whatever it is. There is also a limitation, I'd say, to duodrille, that it has a Celticity and therefore... can sort of energetically might be exclusive to someone who is, you know, mixed heritage from Chinese and African or something. unless they've grown up in Wales, they might not then feel that calling to Druidry. So there's that, but I think when I think about witchcraft, This is kind of this umbrella term for so many traditions worldwide. And I quite like that, you the craft. You could be Japanese, you could be African, you could be Portuguese, you could be Scottish, you know, could be French. You could be South American. You could be from anywhere in the world and you'd fit into that umbrella of the craft, of witchcraft. And I really like that about the craft, you know. But then I love that about Druidry too, that, you know, it is holding precious this these wisdom teachings of British Isles and Europe, this particular style of Celticity and Britonic and Gallic and it's got that about it. I'm a kind of universalist. I like to draw circles around everyone. don't like to draw circles around small groups, but that's great. But I do like, I love poetry for that. I've grown up feeling a sense of displacement. I've got, just because I've got Scottish, Welsh, English, different heritage. So even I've grown up in the Chiltern Hills thinking, where do I belong? But just... But just the Druidry itself, forget the cultural stuff, just connecting to the animals where you live, the trees where you live, the weather where you live, the seas and the rivers and the springs where you live, the stars that twist and turn where you live, the minerals and the rocks and the, you know, just on that level, it will connect you to all those things. And then you lay on top of that, all the folklore of those things and the stories of the land and the stories of the cultures that have lived there. You know, I think there's a... I think there's only one indigenous European language and that's Basque. George: Okay. Chris: Yeah, that's the only indigenous European language is the Basque language. There might be a couple of others, all the others, know, so even, you know, we hail Welsh and Gaelic, George: Is that Chris: there's like a, there's this kind of hearty indigenous, you know, of this place and they have, there are of this place, but they've come from somewhere else, you know, and developed here. And so there's I love that, I love dissolving our sense of ownership of places. I quite like that. And I think that's gotta be the way forward in multicultural sharing of land and spaces. And I love multi-faith ceremonies. love multicultural gatherings. Just the other day we were watching a sunset after primal gathering, learning about chalk and flint and all the... the raising of organic cattle. And I was teaching beekeeping and we're learning about authentic relating. We're learning about so many things there. And there we all sat at sunset with a woman from southern India, a woman from northern India, her partner who's English, me and my kids who are a little bit Indian and a bit Welsh and a bit Scottish. And then someone who's heritage from Trinidad. And just all of the, there's a whole group of, and other people too, and this whole group of people from different places, but just connecting to that sunset and connecting to this time of year and to the harvest with a bit of incense and someone singing a song and there's a... So, indigeneity can be weaponized into nationalism and national socialism, know, George: Så slipper vi slag. Chris: and saying, this land is mine, it's not yours. You know, we've been here, but wherever humans are, they've pushed out another species and we've pushed out and cultivated. But saying that, of course, indigenous cultures, we do glorify the past, we do glorify indigeneity, even though there might be, there might be animal abuse and there might be female genetic, what is it, FGM or whatever. There might be George: Yeah. Chris: coercive behaviour in the way marriages work and there might be child abuse and there might be, in our eyes, so we can glorify. indigenity and natural ways. When there's problem in the present, we often glorify the past and try and recreate it now, which is a good strategy for recreating something new. I think that just because something's ancient doesn't mean it's so wise. I think we've got to sort the wheat from the chaff. George: A hundred percent. Yeah. I I have you ever heard of a guy called Ken Wilbur? Chris: I George: Yeah. Chris: Yeah, yeah. I think I might have read one of his books even. George: like he has to philosophy or this approach called integral theory. And it's it's a big theory and there's a lot of different aspects to it. And and one part is that what what is one part of it that's is sometimes called spiral dynamics. And it's about that he categorized different different levels of the evolution of consciousness. different yeah di different levels, different steps. Yeah. And And then map them across human hist history basically. And what I found quite fascinating is that all those different st steps are like happening at the same time. Because you, for example, still have groups that are very much about securing your leading position with the violence and with like force and and brutal force. Yeah. Thinking about like maybe a mafia structure. Yeah. and at the same time you have like groups that are very much about environment and equality, maybe like a more green movement. At the same time you have like very like capitalist and and success and output-driven structures. So it's like right now happening at the same time. and in his theory, the next big jump, which is also already happening, is like a jump towards a new paradigm that is able to integrate all of the the other ones. Because that's the differen that's right according to him it the difference is that before that they are exclusive. So Because Chris: Didn't know before that. George: I didn't know before and also because like before that there's always a comparison towards I'm better than you because of like the green environment, the green movement would say I'm better than the capitalists because of that. But it Chris: So often a new religious movement or a new political movement, or even a new beekeeping movement, they to set themselves up in opposition to something else. So yeah, there's something about setting something up that's not in opposition to anything else, but kind of has a more universal feel and... George: hard. Yeah, and exactly. And like so according to him, and of course that's you can debate on on that theory and on this approach, but according to him, this new step, this new paradigm is able to to do what you said, like to to s look at everything else and to see okay, what are the good things and what are the not so good things? And how can we take the best things from the different Chris: from the different levels. But even that, there's a round table and it's just one person's what's good and what isn't good and this person over here sitting right opposite them might have a completely different point of view. George: Yeah. Chris: So there's even that, how do you set at the round table people George: Yeah. Chris: that have got completely different view to you and create and progress and understand and listen and George: Yeah. Chris: share. George: I feel it's like often coming down to to connection and reconnection. Chris: trust and, I mean, there's so many things. I mean, look at the world at the moment. Look at Gaza. know, it doesn't matter what side it is, just imagine just one of the cultures in conflict just said, you have it, it's yours. I mean, what a kind of hearty thing to do. And then the amount of grace that could come through that, and the amount of forgiveness and the amount of... Just. I just imagine that. Where does that happen in the world? And the amount of trust that would need, and the amount of, yeah, I mean, it's a nice statement, but just how do we reach those places? George: Yeah, I feel for when w when I heard you say about duality, then I I I often heard for myself, yeah, the w the word connection between like Reconnecting with our like true self or authentic self and and and that like connecting different parts of ourselves that are in in opposition to each other and in conflict, in inner conflict. Which is natural if we in the way most of us grew up in the in the way mo most parents parent or most schools teach that that we have to suppress inner aspects because they're not wanted or we have to ex suppress certain memories because we are alone with them and we can't deal with them because somehow the connection to our caregivers is not a connection of trust where we talk about it. Yeah. So to connect all of those things again and connect the mind and the body to like a whole organism, to connect ourselves with like our environment and and nature. Yeah. to connect ourselves with different cultures, different traditions and and also to connect ourselves with like something that's going beyond like the the the physical world. Chris: just carrying, you never stop learning. You never stop learning, you're always finding more and continue. It's like you're a mycelium and just continually connecting. It's just always growing to the subtleties and the newness and of course, climate's changing. It's just little things like that. There's always more to learn and meeting new people and understanding and hearing about Ken Wilber that haven't heard his name for years. It's just growth, isn't there, if you're open to it. George: Totally. And like I feel that's also like an you know, a big overlap between different wisdom traditions that I encountered is that at the core they often talk about the same things. Chris: Yeah, that's something I love, know, because you can get a circle of, part of a group called the wisdom keepers and you get this circle of people and someone might have loads of feathers, someone might be dressed in white, the other person might have a boar skin on his back, someone else might have a kangaroo skin on his back, you know, but there's this kind of group of people with all these cultural accruements and regalia and powerful objects and things like that. And then we'll get together and there's a sort of, and I just love those moments of like the kind of sloughing of those skins in a way. It's like, yeah, all these people, they're all shiny people, generally. That might be the curation of the people that have picked them, but they're all like, they're all kind of people with a heart-centred shininess about them, a certain level of prayer and maybe a good orator. We've got a good storehouse of folklore and songs and medicines and teachings. And they've gone through the mail as people in life. can see that there's often people who have kind of done some inner work and out work and gone through challenges and come through the other side. And then they've reached this place, or we've reached this place of being able to teach some stuff, people being invited to teach some stuff. And then all those people can sort of be together in the same place. And often there's a language barrier, so you can't really communicate in the same language that easily. And you just see each other. And then you just imagine. You see all these people doing the same work, but just in a different culture. And they're people that are, they're just radiant people. I'd like George: Yeah. Chris: just to have that moment. Again, I'm just kind of fused, I'm like a fuser, universalist kind of trait. Just like to see the fact that, we could all just shed all these skins, couldn't we? And that'd be that further step closer to not to forget atrocities or tragedies or oppressions or genocides or... or environmental facts, you know, it's really important, but just this moment of mutual acceptance and kindness and understanding of that we're all just souls doing this thing. And even practice, often in the middle there's an altar or a fire or something in the middle, and often there's an honoring of the horizon in a circle, or before cardinal points of the compass and the stars above and the earth below and there's a... Yeah, often, yeah, yeah, there's such a similar, there are like common denominators, but I don't want to water it down. There were anthropologists who went around the world and kind of picked all the kind of, in a colonial way, of cherry picked all the good bits of different shamanic traditions and invented kind of core shamanism and so on, in this kind of slightly colonial way. So I don't want to do that kind of, I don't want to do that, I just want to. We want to honour all the different ways and the diversity, but there's this wonderful similarity. George: Like like that. And I feel then it's really important to not forge it with like you know Maybe not getting lost in in in in the mechanics of it, in terms of like, no, the way you have to invoke the directions is this way, it's my way, and and if you do it differently it doesn't work or it's wrong. Yeah. But to see, okay, the people maybe have different mechanics of doing it. Of course. But the underlying act or the underlying Chris: Yeah, I from a magical practice you would say it's your intent that's important, you know, it's your heart. If you've got a true heart and your intent is right, then that's the most important thing. And everything else around the edges could be anything that you really put your faith in. But there are traditions that do things in a traditional way, you know, and there are spirits that like a particular offerings and there are deities that like a particular prayer. And I suppose they're just filters again that we've filtered, the diviner's filtered through. into different cultures in different ways. And there are powerful forces in different landscapes that we might have... So every wisdom tradition has grown from a landscape, hasn't it? And the language even has formed in landscapes. So of course some traditions are more relevant to the place that they grew up in, that they've evolved from, and the landscapes that have shaped them. Like in the Isles of Britain, it's an island. George: Yeah. Chris: the seas and the tides and the land, and sky and all that. You often, in the Druid tradition, you kind of share a breath with the earth beneath us, the land, whatever we're on with, whether it's chalk or granite or sandstone. And then we share a breath with the sky above us and the stars of this season and the sun and the moon at this time. And then we share a breath with the seas that surround these sacred isles. George: Beautiful. Chris: and the crests of the waves of the horses of Monannon. He became St. Michael. And the crests of the waves are the cattle of Belle, of Belinus. And that's her coming in and grazing and then going out again and coming in and grazing again and the crests of the waves are the sheep of Guenhuiju, the shepherdess of the sea. She's like a Venus figure, like the flood of Venus is her flood. And this, yeah. and all the seafaring folk. And of course, the Druids here were astronomer, priest and priestesses because you need to know the stars to be able to navigate the seas. Like the Bedouin in the middle of the desert, they needed to know the stars to get through the desert. So often mythologies and the stories are all in the skies as well. You see it, like if you're a Greek or a Phoenician or a North African or a Cretan, you needed to know the stars to get through. the Mediterranean. So George: Yeah. Chris: often the whole of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, all stories of, know, it's all style encoded into these ancient stories. It's important stuff to have these connections. of George: Of course, like really being present with this moment, right? Like to that's something I heard in you in when you talked about yeah, connecting with the land, with like the weather around you, the the stars, the moon. Yeah. It's like really being present in w where are we right now? Yeah. In in in the in this like bigger system, right? Yeah. Chris: I'm going to look at the camera now and say, where are we right now? When you're on a screen, even if you were reading a book right now and not looking at a screen, you'd still be abstracted from here and now. You'd still be, your mind would be in this abstract place. Your text is magic and text is sigils and it encodes power into these books and grim miles and things, but there's just so much of it. So these screens and the text that we read, it's abstracting us from... what we're yearning for. So the druidry and the craft and indigenous cultures and technologies and primitive skills and the weather, wisdom and the growing of food and those things, they're so important this time, but it's highly mechanized. I'm not saying get rid of all the mechanism. I'm just saying it's doubly important at this time of high mechanism and high abstraction of our human existence to also reflexively stretch and sink our taproots. You might never have a taproot. So to start to find where you're to put your taproot and how that might be. mean, you could be a nomad and still have a taproot, but that taproot could be goats, sheep, whatever. know, it could be something, it could be cryptocurrency, but you know, have a taproot into the natural world to source that sense of strength and empires rise and fall. One day this will all be unplugged. One day, you know, we'll be... we'll be subsistence farming again and there'll be tears before bedtime, but in the morning we'll be more nourishing and there's a desire to kind of get back to this place, I suppose, isn't it? I don't know. I've experienced a great, keep touching that mic, I experienced a wonderful sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity. sense of community, a sense of connection to animals, to plants, food, to material, to the material world. And the highest form of materiality is environmentalism, know, and spirit. And through these indigenous traditions, I experience a great connection to spirit and to song and to story and to music and to folk instruments. people and landscape in an abstracted way that's gone into kind of story and song and spirituality, but that abstraction is organic and it's not so mechanised and there's a... We just know that it's healthy, don't we? We yearn for it. George: Yeah, yeah. I w just remembered like an episode I did with Dara. Do you know him from Inward Bound? Dara Stewart? I'm Chris: I think I've met him a few times. George: I'm sure you met him on medicine and Yeah, of course I have, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he he said like when he works with people, he o often asks them like, you know, when is the last time you danced? When is the last time you had your hands in the soil? When is the last time you You s you you you you you sang together with other people. Yeah. You when is the last time you did something creative? Mm-hmm. Chris: You reminded me. George: And often often people haven't done that in a in a long time, huh? Chris: It reminded me of folk festivals and Morris dancing and Breton dancing and folk dancing. I was teaching at an event recently in Wales, some Breton dancing. I'm 1 % Breton. So, you know, I've had a love of Breton music since I was a goat herder in France and got introduced to it there. And I've been playing it and teaching dancers ever since. And recently I've got my DNA tested and now I don't feel like I'm culturally appropriating too much. But Britain is one of the third most druidic places on the planet. They'd say it's the first most druidic place on the planet. But the Breton dancers, was teaching at this event and this Welsh guy went off and taught another event and he had someone say that folk dance is like the finest community building technology. Because you're all, because you're either singing the same song or it's non-verbal and you're all like, especially in the lion dances where you're all connected and holding hands and dancing together. And it's trance, the music gets you into a trance. George: Yeah. Chris: You might be up late and you might be dancing for hours and it's cardiovascular and healthy and it's embodied and somatic. But also it's social because you might be dancing with so many different people and mingling with your sweat and your smells and your pheromones and your thoughts with everybody else. And there's just a magic about that that is timeless and wonderful. And the musicians, of course, they might be marked up a little bit, but they're playing instruments which are inherently acoustic. And, it's just a wondrousness about that. George: Sounds beautiful and f for me I have a lot of memories coming up from from ayahuasca ceremonies or Sampita ceremonies with a lot of dancing and a lot of like line dancing or like yeah being in a space like this. But also at the end I think house music is a lot of Chris: House Music did that, it? But it was, you know, with ecstasy, acid and loads of lasers and strobes and smoke machines in a warehouse. You know, so slightly different, but it did, it brought people together on the dance floor. Yeah. Anything that brings people together on the dance floor is good, but I'd say that this... That also can be quite abstract if people are on their own trip or on their own peril or whatever. And in a kind of day glow, fluorescent kind of place, there's something just wholesome and together about just a Breton dance or a Morris dance or a Kaylee dance or a folk dance from whatever your culture is. There's folk dance all over the world. you just, that would be happening in your town, there'd be a folk dance group. they might all be like over 70 and need some young blood. Go there. know, these traditions are dying off, you know, and learn the musical instruments and get into that. At Madison George: Yeah. Chris: Festival year, we had a really big injection of like Irish folk musicians. And of course there's always been folk musicians from Sam Lee and the Nest and you know, brings amazing musicians from many different cultures. But there's just a brilliant injection of folk music from the British Isles this year. George: I I really love that at Madison festival. Chris: Yeah. George: And it was also interesting, like you know, like in in in in house and techno, often like a a moment where a lot of energy comes up on the dance floor is when when like the hi-hat is coming back, like the yeah and the drums or any the offbeat hi-hat. And I felt the offbeat hi-hat of Irish folk music is the flute. As soon as the flute is coming in, everybody's like Chris: Yeah, especially the penny whistle when it gets cut. Or the bagpipes. George: and something I would like to touch on in in this last part of our conversation, Chris is like is plant medicine because it's one of the topics of of the podcast. Yeah. And maybe to hear a bit like in what way, if at all, plant medicine, psychedelics very important for your journey. How do you see that? Chris: Yeah, so as a young man, as a young man, you know, think I smoked my first joint in the back of a car on the way to Donner's Rock Festival. Yeah, you mentioned it. At age of 14 or something. And, you know, helped me get into the music and relax and... I was at a grammar school, which was quite stressful, know, wearing a blazer and lining up and learning all this information. So I I started to grow my hair bit longer, started to relax, it relaxed me a bit. George: Yeah. Chris: I was also doing sort of stage school once a week, but a quite high pressure grammar school, doing GCSEs and A-levels and then expected to go on to do a degree somewhere, which I did. So it helped me there, helped me sort of relax and become chilled. Gave me this kind of, so that plant then helped me just, and it helped, of course I did. A level art, it helped with that as well. So it was a creative strategy. And I got into Richard Dad and all the symbolist painters and you know, just got into all these other art forms through that. And I suppose it's not plant medicine, but know, LSD. And therefore through that, know, Magic Mushrooms helped me through art college, just as again, as a creative strategy and a kind of, and a... And socially, know, just a group of people would go and do that and want around the hills or whatever, go to the seaside. And then... I yeah, I told you I had a kidney stone in Greece and that changed my life. was really painful. I was in my mid twenties and I just completely gave up. I gave up all substances. I gave up smoking, gave up drinking, gave up any drugs. I gave up salt. I gave up sugary foods. gave up meat. I gave up spicy food and I gave up sexual relationships and I just really sort of... got rid of all these external stimuluses and just found myself and got into doing a lot of yoga and Tai Chi and Qigong and was doing, still doing the witchcraft and the Druidry but from a really simple, organic, healthy place. And then about a year later, I think I was back in Greece again and I was on a long walk with a Danish girl on the way to a... to another town, was a really hot day and I'd run out of water and all she had was like a bottle of fizzy drinks. I thought, go on then, I don't drink, I don't take sugar, but I needed that. And by that evening, I was having a glass of wine and eating a barbecued rabbit and then enjoying physical company against something. So there's that element of like finding yourself and then slowly getting back into these external stimulants. George: Yeah. Chris: But knowing that everything... I needed I had within myself to be whole and to be spiritual, to have visions. you work in these meditational realms, you're still having visions. And the doors had been opened as a young man, you know, so I'd always, from the early experiences of psychedelics. And then later in life, yeah, when I got into beekeeping and brewing more and... certain plants would just pop up. So henbane is this wonderful, it's not psychedelic, it's more of a deliriant. But it's wonderful, amazing, powerful plant. just popped up, there's a sacred grove here. Many jurors over the years have planted trees here in the sacred grove. And one year, just in the ash of the sacred grove, these henbane plants just popped up. I knew they were around, they come and go, pop up at different places in the farmyard. Hadn't seen one for about seven years, and suddenly this giant one grew in the middle of the sacred grove. asking to be, you know, sort of understood and worked with. So I did lot of research. I started to brew with the henbain plant and it was a traditional hops. The word pilsner comes from Bilsa, which is the goddess. And Bilsenkraut is a German for henbain and it's related to herbs, to deities of prophecy. And it's called Jupiter's bean and related to the goddess Bilsa and also Bellinutia and And perhaps even Bellinus, you he's a god of prophecy from the British Isles and these Isles are known as the Innes Fell Valley, the honey isles of Bell. So there's all that interesting stuff. And so I started to do some sort of, what's the word, psycho-nautic research into henbane and smoking the seeds and brewing with herb. And I just say, don't mess with Madame Henbane. But it's fascinating. fascinating herb, but yeah, it's not. It can be used as a hops, but people die from eating it, mistaking it for cabbage. So there's lots of knowledge there, which I has been lost and can be rediscovered. And then through being a Druid elder, I often get invited to be with other elders. one time it was an ayahuasca ceremony with the yawanawa. And George: Beautiful. Chris: it reminded me of psilocybin. just reminded me of a really heavy dose of psilocybin. I mean, it's so similar. Maybe it was slightly more somatic, bit more erotic, a bit more embodied. But maybe that's because I'm just... George: It's also very personal. Chris: It felt like a flock of birds had landed on me and I had a slight headache at the time. It felt like they just were packing away and taking away that headache. And I have got a lot of honeybee... imagery and I wasn't quite sure if my eyes should be closed and should be racing away in this psychedelic world or if my eyes should be open and I should be engaging with the songs that being sung or whatever. yeah, so I've experienced those moments and they've been, think my main, how that affected me mainly was there was a sense of relaxed confidence. with artistic expression that came from that. There was like an idea and I've always been quite good at having a vision and putting it into practice. Whether it's building an iron edge round house or whether it's creating an apiary with bee skeps or whether it's going on a pilgrimage along the River Thames, making a coracle for peace, whatever it might be. I've always been quite good at having a vision and putting it into practice. I sort of came out of there with this kind of sense of a lot of self-consciousness had just been shed. there's this confidence that came of artistic expression. Like, yeah, I'm gonna write that song and then perform it here. yeah, I'm gonna write that poem and then publish it there. yeah, I'm gonna write that book and do it there. I'm not gonna stand in there. You know, there's just a sense of, yeah. George: Yeah. Chris: Yes, so getting out of the way. Exactly, yeah, that's a way putting it. George: I can totally relate for me. in the past I was very afraid of singing in public. Yeah. And doing that a lot in plant medicine ceremonies and and in the medicine definitely helped to to let that go. Yeah. To become very comfortable in it. Chris: Musician, you're a... I guess often the DJ is behind the decks or... George: It's it's different, yeah. I feel I would say yeah with DJing I think it's easier to hide in a way. You can hide behind the decks and you can hide behind like the technical stuff and the records. Yeah. definitely more than you could hide behind a guitar. But with the guitar you can still hide more than with the vo with the voice you can't hide. Yeah. I feel that's a big difference. Yeah. Chris: Yeah, songwriting and you're putting your soul out there for everyone to kind of... George: That's another level again, right? Like if you if if you're DJing you usually play records of other people. Yeah. And it's yeah, you you put yourself out there in like the selection you make and maybe what you choose to play, what you choose not to play, and then also how you play it. and I feel it's very different from Playing your own songs. Performing your own songs. And you can also do that, you know, you can do an electronic live act and you're playing your own music. I for me personally I feel it's that still a different level to singing your own songs with your own lyrics. I feel that's as personal as it can be in music. Chris: sharing a poem. George: Or sharing a poem, yeah. Yeah. Chris: or even a painting or even a drawing. George: Yeah, that's really making yourself visible in a way and and and feeling comfortable and and and and good with that. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel that's yeah, we touched on that earlier, right? You you also mentioned that it was a path for you and a challenge for you to go into that. Chris: Yeah. George: Yeah. And I feel it's for everyone. I feel it's Chris: conscious now you know I I think it's just part of being human George: I think so too. I feel it's some something that's really important to hear for for a lot of people that that maybe feel like I would like to do something like that, but to to to to to lift this illusion of like people who do that already do it and that you maybe admire for that, always felt comfortable doing that and just like woke up like that as a child, yeah and were like, yeah. I'm I'm feeling comfortable doing it's yeah for everyone I talk to it's it's a journey and a path and and it was quite remarkable that for me to learn that even some people who who are really really well known for like a certain craft, like singing for example, yeah actually feel very insecure about it. and I don't f I feel it doesn't have to be like that. And there there are many ways you can shed those things. Chris: Yeah, I guess we don't want to get... Become George: Yeah but it would Chris: arrogant and sort of full of yourself either, do you? I suppose, but... George: Yeah, but I feel For for for me, I remember with DJing at one being an there at one point there was a shift from just a shift from being nervous or insecure around playing or like how it's going to be towards really embodying okay, I've done it so many times, I have so much evidence that it's always good and always somehow fitting to the moment, and then really trusting in that. And and also be okay with like, you know, if it's not going to be good, it's not it's fine too. And then and from that moment I yeah it was a different level of enjoying it. Chris: Hmm. George: And as a last question, Chris, like if people want to find out more about your work and what you offer, the many things that you offer in in different ways, where would you direct Chris: Okay, well just written a book. It's called Bee Skept Making, sort of mythology and folklore and it's got chapter on mead making and beekeeping in skeps and all the mythologies of beekeeping. You can get that most book buying places. And George: What's the title? Chris: Bee Skept Making. George: He's gap making by Chris Park. Yeah. Chris: I think it's a subtitle I can't remember. It's something like the heritage folklore and George: Yeah. Chris: stuff like that as well, of honey peas. And I used to have a website but I don't anymore. It was just really, really, really old and falling apart. But I guess half of what I do, I tend to post on Instagram, or other people do, I'll collaborate on a post. And that's Chris Charles Park. I'm quite lazy. I don't really organise events. I'm just happy for other people to organise them and invite me to come and do something. maybe I do, know every now and again I'll organise a mead making event here. I'll teach me making from here and beekeeping from here. But often I'm like a druid at an event or a celebrant for a wedding or a funeral or a hand fasting or George: Yeah. Chris: playing the bagpipes for a Burns night. I'm a ceremonial piper, know, Highland piper with the whole... full highland dress and a feather bonnet or just a piper for a Breton dance or singing folk songs and playing other things, other instruments. I'm a professional storyteller. Sometimes see me at storytelling festivals and around campfires. I teach the Breton dance at different places. I'm involved with Primal Gathering and Medicine Festival. Sometimes go to places like Soul Revolution and Ancient Activation is this thing I've got involved with in the Throsedene region which is really inspiring. I love the Throsedene and I've lived in Wales quite a bit as well, the Throsedene in Wales. I'm involved in lots of different things. George: Super beautiful. So yeah. your book, Instagram can be gateway and then also coming to yeah events like Madison Festival or that a lot of storytelling festivals, foreclo Actually like the UK is really rich on good festivals. Yeah. Chris: Wasing, the summer solstice are wasing. So, George: Yeah, raising a state. Chris: co-ordinates of the sunrise so many there. George: Page has like events, right? Like for like the the the solstice and like the Equinoxes. Chris: Yes, I'm often taking people to Stonehenge or Avebury for different events and West Kennet Longbarrow, Wainless Smithy and the White Horse. So I guide people around the landscape taking them to sacred sites. George: Amazing. So many, many different entry points to you, out of that. Chris: Yes, yeah, I'm self-employed as a kind of artist-stroke tutor, it sort of branches out into all these different things. George: Yeah, I think it's important that's really beautiful and important like to Yeah to be in a lot of to be in the mix with a lot of Chris: Yeah, and I live off grid in a straw bale house with orchards and beehives and kids and have a workshop here where I make scaps and make art and teach many things. Beautiful. And you never stop learning, constantly learning. George: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Chris, for for taking time for this episode. Chris: My pleasure. Yeah. I'm sorry that I'm not more of a plant medicine type person, but in a way I am because I make mead. I make a lot of mead. It's called methaglene. so methaglene is a mead with herbs. So it's currently a virgin on herbal medicine. And as a druid and a witch, we work really closely with herbs George: Yeah. Chris: and also the brewing. of the different styles of hops that I mentioned, the henbane. I don't always use henbane, but I've just made this wonderful birch sap mead, and you've tasted that and experienced that today. And every single batch is different. I've just made an elderberry mead that's got a few slows and a few plums in it. And I might make a mead in the springtime full of dandelion heads that will be really good sort of flushing for your kidneys, and they're really good for your innards, as they say around here, good physics for your innards, is the old sort of wheelchair. knowledge on that one. yeah, so I never stop learning about more different meads. I've made them out of seaweed, mead, and the methaglene literally translates as medicine. Methagon is the medic or the doctor and chlene is a liquor. So it's a doctor's drink. Literally the methaglene and the mead is medicine. Even the word medicine is related to the the old words, mel and med for honey. And if there's a saying from the ancient... West Bracken's, the physicians there, the doctors there, was there are three medicines in the world, and that's water, honey, and labor. So keep yourself hydrated and wash regularly. Honey is good for you internally, externally, metaphorically, and a good bit of hard work in cardiovascular. But mixed in the honey and preserved in the honey drinks are the herbs, the astringent ones, the anti-inflammatory herbs. the more entheogenic herbs and the simple relaxing nerve tonic herbs like the borage and the St. John's wort. Yeah, so I a lot of work with plants and plant medicine in that way, mixing with the honey. And of course, the bees themselves are little plant medicine experts. They gather some of the finest medicines from the world, the nectar of fine plants. And the propolis, which is the immune system of trees and plants, they bring back and they improve the pollen, which is so much powerful medicine in bee pollen. It's got all these 43 amino acids in there, and it's got more protein in it per gram than beef. And it has no interest in feeding a bacteria flower. So it's also antimicrobial and antibacterial. And the propolis is radio protective even from the sun rays. it's got so much that bees do that is plant medicine. They are plant medicine experts. They've been around for 120 million years since our oldest WASP ancestor. 40 million years as honeybees. Whatever they do and whatever they leave behind is medicine. We're a toddler of a species compared to them, just crashing around, just realizing the consequences of our actions. What we leave behind? Microplastics, nuclear wastes. Yeah, we can learn a lot from bees. George: A hundred percent. And I feel that's a a wonderful way to close this perspective that also the the psychedelic plant medicines are only like a a slither of plant medicine and Chris: Yeah. George: that it is so much more than that. Yeah. It's a part of like Chris: Anyway, psychedelics are like the hard edge of plant medicine. It's like the scalpel of plant medicine when you need surgery, I would say. That's how you should see psychedelics. They're there when you need surgery, when the scalpel needs to go in. But all the other plants are like plant medicines when you don't need surgery, you just need a remedy or that prophylactic. because if you take psychedelics all the time, you're going to be a psycho. But you don't need them. You already need them if you're really out of balance. George: Yeah. And I as you yes I'd like to open a door as well. Yeah. that they can really open the door and facilitate like our own healing abilities. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So the strong psychedelic plant medicines are like a gateway drug to nature. Doesn't mean you can't routinely take a, you know, a kind of, you know, a bit every now and again, you know, but you George: Fresh it up. Chris: don't need the whom, you know, and the whoosh and the, and because in a way that's, you know, you're chasing sensationalism. You're chasing. George: that's yeah my shaman is often d saying that in the ceremonies that it's you know, you might have colourful visions and the fireworks, but it's this work is not about this at all. It's actually and I feel that's really important. Yeah. That's not about the Chris: That's what I talking about. George: yeah. And as we touched on earlier, or I touched on quite a bit, is that the more sensitive and open our system becomes, the less impact we need. And we can then actually really also feel the impact of like a very subtle medicine or subtle herd. Yeah. Chris: You might come home to your flat in the middle of London next to that 5G mast and when you're really open and sensitive, think, well, I can't live here anymore. George: Yeah. Chris: You know, things like that. might become so, I'll never forget, you know, after taking a load of mushrooms as a young art student and walking back down from the hills past this kind of electricity substation that was fizzing and, you know, water passes so many times before I never noticed that sort of fizzing. You know, you just become so... hyper aware of your own internal nature, but also the nature around you and the technology around you and you think crikey, give that a wide berth. I'm a bit of a luddite, I do think less mechanism, more organism, healthier life. George: Beautiful. Nice. I think that's a great too close. Yeah. Thank you so much, Chris. Chris: Okay, thank you.