Awakening to the Wisdom of the Oak
Spirituality & Health|July/August 2023
Kristoffer Hughes is the chief of the Anglesey Druid Order in Wales, and his mission—through his school of myths and workshops and books—is to provide everyone a bite from the cauldron of modern Druidry.
STEPHEN KIESLING
Awakening to the Wisdom of the Oak

Your spiritual journey started with a “wild awakening” in Wales. That sounds about as wild an awakening as one can have.

[Laughs.] I grew up within a landscape that is particularly mythological. Not only is it a place that’s steeped in myth and legend, it’s also a place that is literally littered with ancient Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments. The island I currently live on, Anglesey, is where my mother’s family comes from, and it’s the ancestral home of the British Druids. But as a kid growing up in [the] seventies and eighties in Wales, there was really only one option available, and that was Christianity. And that didn’t quench my thirst. I found the whole thing totally alien. So I spent time alone in the woods at the back of the house, which was an incredibly magical place—one of these small, ancient Celtic rainforests. And I became aware of the numinous and the subtle within the landscape, but I had nobody to talk to about it. I didn’t think anybody else could possibly understand. Not a single member of my family has any spiritual inclinations whatsoever. So, I was a little stuck.

This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of Spirituality & Health.

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