Druidism - and other animistic 'primitive' religions - saw the divine fully animated in nature, i.e. in earth, and its plants and animals, even its inanimate physical landscapes and features thereof, e.g. mountains, streams, lakes and rocks. Romano-Greek and later Christian traditions removed the divine from Nature and from earth and placed it 'above'. In the process, earth and nature were relegated, even denigrated, as 'prisons of the soul'. The flesh was seen almost as dirty.

But it's important to recognise that the Druids venerated the Sun, Moon and stars also, indeed they were accomplished astronomers. Thus, they did not exclusively identify the divine as being 'of earth'. In that respect, their world view was more holistic, uniting earth with the stars, seeing the divine as immanent in both. This echoes the world view of the alchemists, who, whilst identifying the prima materia, or 'chaotic matter' as being raw, 'found in the dirt', a 'black, putrefied matter', common as muck and overlooked and ignored by the vast majority, was nonetheless the miraculous 'first matter' which, with due diligence, was capable of being transmuted into the imperishable Philosopher's Stone, simply by reorganising its elemental constitution. "Despise not the ashes, for they are the diadem of thy heart." Nature is not all sweetness and light, it is often violent, raw and unforgiving, red in both tooth and claw. Birth, life, pain and suffering, death and decay are part and parcel of nature, and were so even before humans came along to intensify that suffering and multiply those deaths. But we should not despise Nature, we should work with it. The divine, immortal human soul is not 'of earth' but is 'in earth', trapped as it were in a human body which ages and decays and eventually dies. The failure to recognise the divinity (and connectedness) of human, animal, vegetable and even mineral souls, means that our souls merely gather dust as we proceed through this brief life on earth, blind to our own potential and that of our surroundings.