The Anti-consumerist Druid

September 26, 2022
This introspective debut from Katrina, Consumed blogger Townsend details how her determination to stop “overshopping” led her to druidism. She tells of her efforts as a teen and young adult to “buy myself a sense of identity” and emulate the women she saw in magazines, leading her to make purchases she couldn’t afford. She decided to rein in her spending through a self-imposed “shopping ban” and by following the advice of Marie Kondo. Then a documentary from the environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion caused her to consider how her “frivolous” spending on fast fashion and disposable trinkets increased waste and contributed to climate change, setting Townsend on a path toward anticonsumerism. Her emerging environmentalism spurred her to revisit paganism, which she had dabbled in as a teenager, and she came to enjoy the connection it offers with nature. She gravitated toward the druid tradition because of its connection to animism and conviction that everything natural is sacred. Townsend’s trajectory from skeptic to believer makes this well suited for readers who might not be sold on paganism (she discusses her fear of “being too woo-woo”), and her discussion of how her druidism intersects with sustainable causes illustrates what the tradition has to offer modern practitioners. The result is a pensive pagan outing that will appeal to nonbelievers.