Our Ancestors represent our ties to the past. They are a source of inspiration, of wisdom, and of guidance. As Druids we venerate our Ancestors, communing with them from between this world and the Otherworld.
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.
Henry Scott Holland
1847-1918
Rev. Raven Mann and Isaura
Rev. Raven Mann
February 27, 1963 – January 2, 2013
Memorial Video
“May the Valkyries welcome you and lead you through Odin’s great battlefield.
May they sing your name with love and fury,
So that we might hear it rise from the depths of Valhalla
and know that you have taken your rightful place at the table of kings.
For a great man has fallen: a Warrior, a Chieftain, a Father, a Friend.”
Cindy Aldrich (Isaura)
June 15, 1977 – August 28, 2016
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul.
You have a body.”
In Loving Memory — A Life Walked in the Grove
To speak of her path is to speak of a journey both winding and wondrous — one that, perhaps, began long before she ever had words for it.
Raised Catholic in her early years, her spiritual road turned sharply at the age of fourteen when she, alongside her two older brothers — one of whom would later become Pastor of the Berean Bible Church of Erie — entered the world of Fundamental Christianity. There she spent more than twenty years in devoted practice. Yet even then, there were signs that her spirit walked older forests.
From childhood, she lived close to the veil.
She often spoke — with humor and shining eyes — of her “imaginary friends,” companions so vivid that her mother worried for her well-being. By seven she was medicated for what others could not understand. By thirteen, when a Dragon made its presence known to her inner sight, her mother urged silence: “Don’t talk about things like that… people will think you’re crazy.”
In time, she would laugh when telling this story, saying she no longer suffered from insanity — she had learned to enjoy it fully. Her uniqueness, once cautioned against, became a light that entertained, comforted, and inspired many.
Though she did not yet call herself a Druid, her soul already knew the old ways.
Her childhood was steeped in the forests around Warren, Pennsylvania, especially at her father’s hunting camp. There, among trees and stone, she practiced instinctive acts of reverence — leaving portions of food on rocks for the wild ones, pouring drink offerings into the soil, speaking to plants, animals, and the land itself. These were not learned rituals, but remembered ones — gestures arising from a deep, ancestral knowing.
The moment of naming came years later on a mountain morning in Kinzua. While camping with family, her nephew — a lifelong Dungeons & Dragons player — looked at her and said simply, “Hey look! My aunt’s a Druid!”
If anyone knew what a Druid was, she reasoned, it would be him.
What began as a humorous remark became a revelation. As she studied the path, she realized she had not become a Druid — she had always been one.
With characteristic wit, she began calling herself “The Genetic Druid,” crediting her Irish father for the inheritance. Over the years she gathered many affectionate titles: Auntie Druid, Druid Mama, Gramma Spider, Dragon Wrangler — each reflecting the love, guidance, and mystique she shared with her community.
Her journey eventually led her into the embrace of the Erie Pagan community and, in time, to Whispering Lake Grove, where she found her spiritual home. After decades living in the neighborhoods of Erie’s lower east side, she fulfilled a lifelong dream — moving to a small cabin in the country in the summer of 2017. It was a return to the land she had loved since childhood, and she delighted in living close to those she held most dear.
She often echoed the saying: “When you find a group of weirdoes who encourage your weirdness — that’s your tribe.”
Whispering Lake Grove was hers.
Today, we remember her as a walker between worlds, a friend to dragon and spider, a keeper of forest ways, and a soul who never stopped listening to the land. Her path reminds us that sometimes Druidry is not chosen — it rises beneath one’s feet like an ancient road remembered.
May the trees speak her name. May the stones hold her stories. May the Grove ever know her as kin.
