The Druid of Harley Street

A book with a fascinating title came out in 2009 – The Druid of Harley Street, edited by William Stranger. It is a collection of writings by the psychiatrist E.Graham Howe, who helped found the influential Tavistock Clinic in London, and was a friend and advocate of the revolutionary psychiatrist R.D.Laing. In William Stranger’s brief introduction to Howe’s work, he writes of Howe’s ‘Psychology of Incarnation’, of his dialogues with Carl Jung, and of the way Howe developed Jung’s theory of the four functions to include an understanding of esoteric anatomy. Stranger outlines Howe’s biography, and gives only one clue as to why he has chosen ‘The Druid of Harley Street’ as the title for his collection. Stranger writes: ‘In the early 1970s…he [Howe] fulfilled his longstanding desire to reside in Wales, the site of ancient Druidic culture that he felt exemplified many of his principles about life and spirit. Howe and [his wife] Doris lived for a while in a small stone house near Bala…’

The collection then offers us excerpts from every book that Howe wrote, bar one: The Mind of the Druid – a book whose most recent edition carries an introduction by David Loxley, Chief of the Ancient Druid Order.

Despite this strange lacuna, which seems almost perverse given the title of the collection, we must be grateful to Stranger for having produced this volume, which gives students of spiritual psychology the opportunity to study material which risked being completely forgotten.

And now, I am delighted to say, this omission has been addressed. Every year The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids invites a scholar to research a topic of relevance to students of Druidry, and this year psycho-spiritual psychotherapist Ian Rees has contributed a paper which focuses on Howe’s The Mind of the Druid.

Howe’s writing is not easy – he is reaching for depths of insight that are hard to express, and Ian Rees’ paper is equally challenging. But if coming to a greater understanding of spiritual psychology, especially in relation to Druidic studies, is your passion, then do have a look at this latest addition to the Mount Haemus collection. You can find it here: The Sixteenth Mount Haemus Lecture: Gathering Mistletoe – an approach to the Work of E.Graham Howe by Ian Rees