This is a book for every Druid to own, and to read again and again. It is a reflection on the honouring of differences which distinguish the Druids of the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. The variety of voices‚ are striking - the commonplace activities of the day are respected as much as the visionary world. The clarity of the expression is notable: uncluttered images matching the outlines of the Australian landscape:
‘A familiar cry, black cockatoos fly . . .
White gums stand
Ghosts of the land . . .
Seasons shift,
Shadows lift,
A spiral of lifetimes weaving’ Padraig Blake p.12

Black cockatoos are rare to Northern eyes. The white gums as the ghosts of the land roots the imagery deep in Australian prehistory. The later lines accentuate the universal significance of the land as sacred rather than focusing on specific trees or creatures. Part of the significance of this book is its breadth of vision beyond re-organisation of seasonal ritual. The poetry and prose explores sacred identity as well as practice: the flow of Awen seeming inseparable from the inspiration to travel the new land through the quest for its secret pathways. Several contributors touch on ways of knowing how to leave some of the power of previous culture behind, and blend memory with unfamiliar acts of reverence in a new land.
‘Instead of leaving our cultures in the old country - or bringing them with us and stubbornly keeping them fixed and static . . .we simply have to translate our ways into the "language" of our new lands. It is important that we honour our ancestors . . . but we must also understand that we are the ancient Druids of the future . . .’
Ruisart, p.23

Murray Barton’s ‘Druidry and the Spirits of Australia’‚ p.34 is a powerful guide to the way in which patient journeying enriches the cross cultural partnership with the Spirits of Australia.
‘to begin with, much of it. . .may be unreachable because you have not
discovered the bridges. As you practise your devotion you will find the hidden pathways and learn the secret names’.

For the most part the symbols in Southern Echoes are shared in metaphors which we can recognise easily.’ Vyvyan’s ‘River Redgum’, p. 24 is the exception. At first I found it difficult; obscure; and unyielding. When I stopped analysing and flowed into a kind of poetic enactive reading aloud, the poem jumped into my heart - a whirling spiral in which spun the shredding of a known life - its fear and rage - and the nurtured rebirth ascending from the red gum's underwater cavern. Memorable strange magic. ‘And when I sank, I was cradled in the red gum's cavern by her feeding fingers, held fast in her mud . . . Then I slowly ascended in the sap of my new mother's limbs. Green was my streaming hair.’

Tiki's ‘Midwinter's Day’‚ p.63 with its focus on the rituals of daily life seem a world apart from the ancient magic of the River Red gum. However these lines catch the same resonance of dissolving and being re created. ‘But for now, there is growth, renewal and life, even as the seeds of death are planted in the greenfire. Life and death in their continuous circle, flowing over and around each other intertwined.’ What matters is not the way we walk the circle, but that we walk it in harmony so that the two hemispheres will one day form a sphere. The contributions in this book have brought that time of grace a little nearer.

Ann Whitlock