Doran is a word I’ve always loved. It was coined by Monica Furlong for her books Wise Child, Juniper, and Colman. You’ll hear me talk about these books a lot as I consider them the most sacred of texts that I own. They set me on my path at around 10 or 11 years old and have guided and shaped my becoming since then.

The word doran is used in these books to describe someone who lives on the threshold between realities: shadow and light, mundane and magical, etc. The doran’s path equips one to live in tune with the seasons of life, and not just the seasons of nature (spring, summer, autumn, winter) but also in rhythm with the flow of life and its many waxing and waning, abundant and harsh phases.

Quotes from Wise Child that offer further explanation:

“…The word we use is doran.” Juniper went on to explain that the word doran comes from our Gaelic word dorus, an entrance or way in (the English have a word very like it.) It was someone who had found a way into seeing or perceiving.

“Seeing or perceiving what?”

Juniper hesitated. “The energy,” she said at last. “The pattern.”

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“So what does a doran do then?”

“Some of us do healing things, like me and my herbs. Some of us sing, or write poetry or make beautiful things. Some of us don’t do anything at all. They often stay in one place, and they just know.”

“Know? Know what?”

“How things are,” said Juniper mysteriously.

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At once I knew that the movement of the blood within me was part of the same pattern that moved the sap in the oak tree to my right. The decay of the food in my stomach was the same as the autumn decay of the plants and trees. When Juniper and I shoveled earth upon our human droppings, I knew that the flies and the little earth creatures fed upon them; this was their food as the fish and animals and roots and berries and seeds were ours. I began to weep at the beauty of this, to say a psalm that Fillan had once taught me praising the good God.

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“Perhaps you will tell us now what a doran is."

"it is someone who loves all the creatures of the world, the animals, birds, plants, trees, and people, and who cannot bear to do any of them harm. It is someone who believes that they are all linked together and that therefore everything can be used to heal the pain and suffering of the world. It is someone who does not hate anybody and who is not frightened of anyone or anything.”

Quotes from Juniper:

“Among the dorans we speak of people having power, you know. We don’t mean power like kings or popes have power, of course, but power to bring things back into a sort of harmony, like tuning an instrument that’s gone flat.”

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“It’s how you feel, isn’t it?” I said to Angharad one day in a moment of insight. “That’s what makes the evenness of the thread. You need to concentrate yet not notice that you are concentrating.” I suddenly remembered what she had said about learning to be a doran being different from learning French.

Angharad laughed. “It’s exactly the same thing,” she said.

I frowned.

“How can it be the same thing? Every old woman sitting spinning on her doorstep knows how to do this. They’re not all dorans?”

“No, not all, but don’t underestimate their wisdom. When you are wise it won’t make them stupid.”

I have held great reverence for the doran path all my life since I first read the book Juniper in middle school, and then Wise Child shortly after. I’ve reread the books so many times that my softcover copy of Juniper is falling apart and is being held together with tape. These books are like a compass, for me, as well as an anchor. I revisit them from time-to-time to check where the needle is pointing and remind me where “north” is.

Recently, after a few years of becoming rather too distracted and busy too do my annual rereading of them, I finally cracked open the series once more. As usual, I felt I had just received a much needed readjustment in my perception of things. But I’m now 35 and something about rereading them again at this older age has shifted my perspective in a greater way than has ever happened before and my understanding suddenly feels much clearer and grounded.

Before finding Juniper, I had always been very drawn to magic and witchcraft, fairytales, nature, etc. As a child I felt deeply that I was born in the wrong time (because I loved primitive and antique technologies and ways of living and wanted to learn how to do everything by hand, “the old way”) and I always had this sense that magic was real.

I also loved other fantasy books like Harry Potter and movies like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, etc. but I understood all of those to be pure fantasy and that their kind of magic wasn’t the “real” kind.

After reading Juniper I knew I had found a primer of sorts for the magic I had been seeking. Juniper, and then Wise Child even further, clarified for me that there is a kind of magic that, though very subtle to the senses if you don’t yet know how to detect it, is very real and can be tapped into. I finally knew with all my heart (though I didn’t yet know how) that I could learn this magic and become someone who could do miraculous things. The will to figure it out had been lit and burned strong within me.

The closest paths to the way of the doran that I could find in my early teens was through Herbalism, Taoism, and Witchcraft. Witchcraft was the easiest for me to understand and the most dopamine inducing at that young age, so that’s the path I sought most fervently.

For Christmas within the year I read Juniper, I asked for a book on learning about herbs. I received The Complete Book of Herbs: A Practical Guide to Growing and Using Herbs by Lesley Bremmess, and that was my bible for a few years until I came of age to drive and travel to the bookstore by myself. At 16 I took a secret trip to Books-a-Million and acquired Earth Power by Scott Cunningham and Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning, along with my first tarot deck. I felt well equipped at that point to start out on my path of becoming a witch, or, more accurately, a doran.

My dedication to this path began with a ritual from Cunningham’s book that I performed alone in the wee hours of the morning during a beach trip with my cousins. I arose while my cousins still lay soundly sleeping, crept out of the trailer and made my way down the sandy path to the beach. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but there was an intention paper and some words I recited to declare my dedication to this wise path. I bathed in the waves, made my way back to the trailer, and crept back into the bed undetected.

Then at about the age of 19, I found and enrolled in a year-and-a day Modern Witchcraft program at The Sojourner in Greenville, NC and self-initiated alongside fellow graduates of the course in 2011. The entire year-and-a-day journey, taught by Heron Michelle, provided the best foundational material I could have possibly gotten my hands on for getting started on the path I had dedicated to walking, and it was right there waiting for me just outside my hometown as soon as I was old enough to fly the nest. I learned the foundations and principles of witchcraft, the elements of magick, the religion and science of the craft, the arts (spell-crafting, herbalism, crystals, and symbols), and the vocations (healer, wise one, shaman). During this time I became reiki attuned as well.

After Modern Witchcraft I went off to study with another teacher who practiced more traditional forms of witchcraft, such as Hedgecraft and spiritwork. Learning these practices of ”straddling the hedge” felt as though I was inching ever a bit closer to the true doran’s way of living in the between. During this period I became very passionate about observing more closely the seasons as I experienced them within my bioregion (as opposed to the seasons rigidly defined by the Gregorian calendar) and becoming better acquainted with the local plants and animals. I found though, that to build a stronger relationship with the genii locorum (spirits of place) I had to learn a language that I could better communicate with them by, and from here I devoted more time to learning tarot, and then later astrology, as well as other forms of divination.

Eventually I came to understood that without good discernment, the tarot, stars, etc. can show me all sorts of things that I either love or hate to see, especially things I deeply fear. But the truth is usually more simple than our greatest desires or fears color it to be. So naturally I began to gravitate towards studying depth psychology and doing shadow work to help me get clearer in my seeing and more grounded in my interpretations. Not an easy path to walk, is all I’ll say about that for now. But neither is the doran’s way.

This is by no means the entirety of the path I continue to walk to this day, but it’s a gist of my backstory that may help you better understand the thought processes and philosophies I’ll be sharing here. This is a good jumping off point for what I intend to write about in this newsletter as well as an explanation for why I’ve named it: Doran Diaries.

Thank you for reading. I hope you stick with me and enjoy 🌸

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