Living Law Part I
The Modern Druidess & the Law of Living Land
Part of the “Living Law” series, exploring ritual, skin, and the memory of land.
Originally written for The Brehon Academy.
I wake each dawn to the soft percussion of the ocean against limestone. The Shipwreck Coast is an ancient library; its ledgers written in sediment, its margins salted by wind.
Here, the shoreline keeps time for me.
When I mist my face with Quandong water, I am not simply hydrating skin; I am negotiating a relationship, re-signing an old treaty between body and Country.
This is Druídheacht in contemporary clothing: the quiet return to land-law through daily, ordinary acts.
Remembering, Not Reviving
The word revival implies something once dead.
Yet the old ways never died; they were merely murmured beneath louder machinery.
My Irish ancestors’ hands still move through mine when I fold herbs into oil. The stories of this land, here, on the southern coast of Australia, are older than any text I’ve known.
Modern druidry, then, is less resurrection than remembrance. A lifting of the veil between now and always.
Druí in Old Irish denotes “oak-seer,” yet oaks were also courts: places where Brehon judges listened and weighed communal ethics. Law was once rooted, literally, in trees and soil.
Today, our statutes live on screens.
But the principle endures: every act has consequences; every harvest requires consent.
To live druidically in 2025 is to conduct life as a covenant, not consumption.
Skin as Treaty-Ground
Skin is the most public edge of the self.
It mediates wind, grief, delight, and ultraviolet truth.
In Brehon times, injury to skin incurred compensation because the body was considered sovereign territory. When we rush to conquer blemishes with quick fixes,
we often replicate a coloniser’s haste: conquer, cover, move on.
I prefer to pause.
To translate the lesion’s language first.
Kakadu plum speaks in polyphenols.
Emu apple whispers flavonoids.
Desert lime carries citric brightness like ancestral lamplight.
Each formulation I craft is a council of plant-voices.
When I press serum into cheeks, I am hosting parliament on the plains of my face, asking:
What do you need?
How can we share the load?
Modern druidesses’ work begins at the pore level, because treaties honoured on skin ripple outward into the community and marketplace.
Braiding Lineages with Respect
I carry Irish bloodlines and live as a guest on Wadawurrung Country.
I do not speak for Aboriginal cultures, and I do not identify as Aboriginal.
But I walk with reverence.
Aboriginal communities have safeguarded these botanicals for tens of thousands of years. As a settler on this soil, I honour that knowledge through respectful sourcing, continual learning,
and a right relationship with the Country.
Reciprocity converts botanical bounty into communal care.
Another clause in the living law.
Everyday Ceremony
People ask how to craft a ritual when mornings already rush.
I answer: simplify, slow, sense.
• Listen first. Before water touches your face, inhale.
• Name the element. Clay cleanser? Earth. Mist? Water. Oil? Fire of pressed seeds.
• Offer something. A breath. A word of thanks. A moment of stillness.
• Seal with silence. Ten seconds, palms over heart, remembering the heartbeat predates every to-do list.
Ritual is not a luxury.
It is literacy in the language of time.
Commerce as Covenant
Running a skincare house in a profit-driven economy tests a druid’s nerve. Ingredients carry price tags. Packaging emits carbon. Algorithms crave novelty.
My compass is the Brehon idea of lóg n-enech, the price of honour.
In practice, this means:
refusing palm oil despite margins
printing on compostable rag paper
publicly listing costs so customers witness the web of labour
Honour, like collagen, is built slowly and lost quickly.
Seasonal Law
Irish wisdom keeps the Wheel of the Year.
Many Aboriginal cultures track six or seven seasons instead of four.
Here on the Victorian coast, late winter brings wattle bursting like small suns. Skin thins in this season. I switch to richer night creams, fewer actives, and deeper rest.
A druidess does not impose product lines on fixed calendars.
She lets sap flow set the schedule.
Scarcity is not a malfunction.
It is a message.
A Quiet Return
I dream that one day our bathrooms will sound like forests
Water trickling. Leaves crushed between fingertips. Prayer instead of scroll.
That “anti-ageing” will become age-honouring.
Those daughters will learn about plants before influencers.
If the word druid feels too archaic, choose another:
Gardener, rememberer, caretaker.
Titles matter less than these three questions I ask at dusk:
• Did I deepen my relationship with the land?
• Did my work restore honour or extract it?
• Did I leave enough silence for ancestors to speak?
When the answers lean yes, I sleep in rightness, like moss against stone.
Invitation
Stand at your mirror tomorrow morning.
Before the tap runs, place your palm on the glass.
Imagine your skin as a valley floor, awaiting dew.
Ask which plants might bestow that dew.
Proceed slowly.
As though signing a treaty older than the language.
Because you are.
Nala means earth.
And this is where we begin.
Aimee Louise Ní hÍceadha
Contemporary Druidess & Skin–Land Steward
Founder, Nala Native
