There is a major peculiarity to the teaching of history in England: it only begins in 55 BCE.
That was the year in which the Roman war leader and politician, Julius Caesar stepped onto a beach
in southern England with the aim of conquering Britain for the Roman Empire. Prior to that, at
least so far as English secondary schools are concerned, there was no history.
This perpetuates the myth of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain and northern Europe being
primitive savages and of the Roman conquest bringing civilisation to a nation of skin-clad
barbarians. It ignores the vast majority of human activity in these lands, from the first
hunter-gatherers with their tools of flint and bone, arriving some 12,000 years ago as the last Ice
Age withdrew, living on whatever animals they could catch, or roots, nuts and berries they could
find, all the way through to the Iron Age people inhabiting large, settled towns, supported by
extensive farming, with complex social structures and religious practices, with jewellery,
weaponry, musical instruments and other everyday artefacts of great beauty wrought with
extraordinary skill from bronze and iron, silver and gold. And in between were the folk who built
Stonehenge, Avebury, Callanish, New Grange and the other great stone monuments that enrich our
physical and spiritual landscape, fire our imaginations, inspire our hearts and souls. In English
secondary schools, none of these people, these rich cultures, their spiritualities and their
struggles, exist. In the schools of Ireland, Scotland and Wales the Ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron
do exist.
The importance of this for our story is that the early chapters in the tale of the Druids took
place before the arrival of the Romans in Britain. In England Druids are seen, therefore, as part
of the missing millennia, a vague rumour existing in that miasmic dark known as pre-history. It is
necessary to apologise to any English readers who, like me, sat through interminable, desperately
dull school history lessons consisting entirely of lists of dates, names of kings and sites of
battles. In dealing with history it is hard to avoid dates, though I can promise you won't find
that many kings or battles here. The history of Druidry is essentially of the ever-changing pattern
of human belief and the activities that stem from it, of which warfare and rulership are only a
small part. Our focus is instead on the spiritual beliefs and practices of our ancestors, seeking
in them the origins of the beliefs and practices of modern Druidry.
You'll notice that I don't use the standard BC and AD designation for dates, i.e. Before Christ
and Anno Domini ('Year of the Lord'). Instead, I use the less culturally specific BCE and CE, i.e.
Before the Common Era and Common Era. Over the last decade or so, this practise has become
increasingly widespread among cultural historians and students of comparative religion and is
beginning to make some inroads among archaeologists. Among pagans, it is rapidly becoming the
norm.
But why do we need history at all? Can't we just skip it and focus on the present? Well of course
you can, but you'd be missing out on a vital part of your understanding of Druidry. For many, a
strong element in the appeal of Druidry lies in a sense that its present day practice links us into
a chain of ancestral tradition that stretches into the remote past. To know the extent to which this
sense relates to reality we must know something of the beliefs and practices of our ancestors, what
gods inspired their lives, how they responded to spirits of place, how their prayers and offerings
were made, what tales they told, what songs they sang. One of the primary functions of the Druid has
always been the preservation of tradition. Our ancestors of blood and of spirit, those now
inhabiting the Otherworld of the dead, had wisdom and insight gained through lifetimes of struggle
and triumph, sorrow and laughter. Their lives, their stories and teachings are the roots of our
world. In gaining knowledge of the past, we discover where we came from, and this helps us to define
who we are and what our place is in the world, and so to plan our path into the future. Without such
knowledge, we can never hope to understand ourselves, our culture, our heritage or our destiny. The
past has shaped us and the world we live in. Incidentally, it also throws up fascinating stories
peopled with characters who range from the inspired to the deranged. In keeping with the bardic
aspect of our tradition, I have selected from history those tales and characters that seem most to
entertain and enlighten and have told their tales as best I can in the given space. Now, read
on...
The origins of Druidry are lost in remote antiquity, but its history,
so far as we can trace it, has been one of continuous evolution; a process
that continues to the present day. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam,
Druidry has no identifiable human founder, nor does it have a fixed canon
of scriptures. Perhaps its nearest equivalent is found in Hinduism, where
the Brahamana caste has much the same socio-religious role as the Druids
in pagan European society. Like the Brahmins, the Druids of old were teachers,
priests, doctors, historians, poets, prophets, guardians of lore and givers
of law. Brahmin and Druid were both noted for their devotion to the concept
of a transcendent Truth. The word Druid may indeed derive from an Indo-European
root 'dreo-vid,' meaning 'one who knows the truth.' Alternatively, it may
be that the 'dreo' element is an intensive prefix giving Druid the meaning
of 'very wise one.' In practice it was probably understood to mean simply
'wise one,' or 'philosopher-priest.' Some Druids did, and still do, perform
priestly functions; officiating in public and private worship, initiating
and instructing, healing and blessing. In seeking a beginning to Druidry,
we must look to humanity's primal responses to being alive in this world,
to its beauty and mystery, to the power of nature unleashed in the thunderstorm,
the ever-changing cycles of birth, growth, decay and death reflected in
the slow path of the sun through the seasons, the waxing and waning of the
moon, the life-giving and life-enhancing properties of water, plants and
animals, the dual nature of fire, the durability of stone. The human soul
has always tended to see these things as powerful and essentially mysterious,
as imbued with spirit. It is then that direct communication becomes possible,
spirit to spirit, human to animal, plant, sea, sky or stone. With communication
comes the possibility of knowledge and understanding, a sense that we are
more than mere specks of dust in a mechanistic universe. In time this builds
to a sense that we may play our own role in the continuing dance of creation,
becoming one with the gods.
As far as we know, the religion practised among the tribal peoples of
pre-Roman Europe had no name, just as adherents of what we call Hinduism
refer to their faith simply as 'the eternal religion.' Again like Hinduism,
this religion seems to have consisted of innumerable local cults based around
local or tribal deities. It seems likely that members of the Druid caste
oversaw the rites of these cults, just as Brahmins oversee those of Hinduism.
Their function was to ensure that rites were performed correctly, and their
presence in itself lent spiritual authority to the proceedings, for they
were professional 'walkers between the worlds;' mediators between gods and
people.
The Tomb-Shrines: c. 4500 - 1000 BCE
In the popular imagination, links have long been made between Druids and
megalithic monuments such as the Avebury henge in Wiltshire and the Rollright
Stones in Oxfordshire. This was also the accepted academic orthodoxy until
the 1930's, when it was decided that Celtic people and their culture did
not reach Britain until 500 BCE, that Druids were a Celtic priesthood, and
that they could not, therefore, have had any connection with megalithic
structures erected between 4500 and 1200 BCE. However, Professor Colin Renfrew,
in his book Archaeology and Language, (Jonathan Cape, 1987), suggests that
Indo-European language and culture had already spread across Europe and
into Britain by 4000 BCE, and that the cultural and linguistic group we
call Celtic developed in situ out of this earlier base, rather than being
the result of external influences. This 'steady state' theory of cultural
evolution was dramatically borne out by the recent discovery of a teacher
living in the West of England who is genetically descended from a man whose
remains were found in a cave in Cheddar Gorge and who had lived in the same
area 9000 years ago.
An additional piece of evidence comes from the writings of Julius Caesar,
one of the very few early commentators to have numbered Druids among his
friends, who says that the Druids of Gaul held that their craft originated
in Britain and was still found there in its purest form. Given that Iron
Age Celtic culture originated in central Europe, this suggests that Druidry
had a different origin, one that pre-dated the arrival of Celtic culture
in Britain. So Celtic Druids may, after all, have been linear descendants
of the megalithic builders of late Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. Our
knowledge of the ritual practices and religious beliefs of these early periods
derives from our interpretation of the physical evidence they left behind.
These include complex passage graves such as New Grange in Ireland, where
a narrow window above the entrance admits a shaft of light at sunrise on
the winter solstice, illuminating an inner chamber deep within its covering
mound; massive stone circles such as those at Avebury in Wiltshire, with
its complex lunar and solar alignments; and the nearby Silbury Hill, an
enigmatic structure that is the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe.
Associated with monuments of this period are beautifully worked gold ornaments,
decorated stones, fragments of pottery, tools of antler and bone, ritual
implements of bronze, and beads of amber and jet.
The earliest megaliths were the great tomb-shrines, of which New Grange
is a highly developed example. They were built from about 4500 BCE until
about 1700 BCE. They are, in effect, artificial caves. Some, like the West
Kennett Long Barrow, have a number of side chambers leading off a passageway
or central chamber. They are widely believed to be symbolic representations
of the womb of an Earth Mother goddess. Many are aligned on the rising or
setting of the sun or moon at significant times of the year. The light of
sun or moon entering the tomb may represent rebirth, fertilisation or both.
The tomb-shrines were not intended solely for burial, though many have skeletal
remains within them. These remains represent only a small section of the
local population, sometimes just one or two family groups. The processes
by which people were chosen to be placed in the tomb-shrines are open to
speculation. Perhaps they were an elite social group perceived as having
some special link with the ancestors of the tribe. Bodies were exposed,
burned, scraped or buried until the flesh had gone from the bones before
they were deposited in the tomb-shrines. Usually, only the skulls and long
bones were put into the chambers. In some cases, these were brought out
periodically and used in rituals around the entrances that often involved
fires and feasting. The fact that most tomb-shrines are located near water
suggests that ritual bathing may also have formed part of the rites. The
construction of the tomb-shrines was such that they could only be entered
through a narrow opening. Since to enter the dark chambers within would
have been to literally enter the world of the dead, the realm of the ancestors,
we may presume that only a few people would make that journey, either to
deposit new bones or to bring out old ones, or to commune in spirit with
the ancestors in search of wisdom, inspiration or initiation. This role
would presumably have fallen to shamans, priests or elders. Other practices
of the period include placing offerings in ritual shafts, suggesting a belief
in gods or powers resident in or beneath the earth, and the ritual use of
the skulls of oxen and other animals, perhaps sacrificed to act as spirit
guardians. The latter practice suggests that animal spirits could be regarded
as human helpers.
Circles of Earth, Wood and Stone: c. 3300 - 1200 BCE
From about 2500 BCE onwards the tomb-shrines fell into disuse, often being
deliberately blocked to prevent re-use. Over the next thousand years the
focus of ritual activity shifted to open-air circles. The reasons for this
are unclear, but the gradual nature of the change suggests a development
among local populations rather than any dramatic invasion of newcomers.
Some remote areas remained true to earlier traditions, notably in the southwest
of Ireland, where chambered tombs seem to have remained in use until about
1000 BCE and to have been used simultaneously with stone circles.
The earliest circular enclosures consisted of bank and ditch earthworks
having one or more entrances, usually constructed on hilltops. Archaeologists
refer to these as causewayed enclosures. Their use is uncertain, but it
seems likely that they represented a way of physically marking the transition
between the outside world and the sacred space of ritual. The banks and
ditches do not seem to be arranged for defensive purposes. The great causewayed
enclosure on Windmill Hill near Avebury was certainly used, among other
things, to both expose and inter bodies until the bones had been de-fleshed
prior to some of them being deposited in the West Kennett Long Barrow. It
is possible that other such enclosures served similar purposes. In a culture
where the dead were the focus of so much ritual activity, these would have
been sacred places indeed.
Later circles consisted of wooden posts or standing stones, sometimes
surrounded by a bank and ditch, as at Avebury or Stonehenge. Like the tomb-shrines
that preceded them, the circles show wide variations in design and alignment.
Most are not, in fact, circles, but more or less irregular ellipses. Stonehenge
seems to have begun around 3300 BCE as a causewayed enclosure but soon gained
a few large sarsen stones positioned to mark the summer and winter solstices
and the cross-quarter days: May Day, Lammas, Hallowe'en and Candlemas. Alignments
at many other sites indicate that, as with the tomb-shrines, the circles
were constructed to reflect or respond to movements in the heavens and to
mark particular times in the cycles of sun and moon. As with the tomb-shrines,
these alignments differed from site to site, suggesting a multitude of local
cults, each with their own traditions of belief and practice.
The existence of huge circles such as Avebury, linked by pilgrim routes
spanning much of Britain, indicates a growing interdependence of peoples,
coming together in great communal celebrations. Some smaller circles seem
to be aligned on the sun or moon at one specific time of year, suggesting
that they were used for the celebration of a single festival season. Larger
and more complex circles such as Avebury contain many alignments, implying
that they were in use throughout the year for an annual cycle of seasonal
celebrations. Some of the larger circles may have had permanent priesthoods
attached to them to oversee these celebrations. This is suggested by the
existence of early wooden buildings at the Sanctuary on Overton Hill, linked
to the Avebury henge by the stone-flanked processional route known as West
Kennett Avenue. Similar structures have recently been found elsewhere in
the Avebury complex. Traces of wooden buildings, sometimes enclosed within
their own ritual barriers of bank and ditch, have also been found at Durrington
Walls near Stonehenge and at other sites.
Burials accompanied by what seem to be items of ritual regalia have been
found associated with a number of circles, including Stonehenge and Avebury.
At Avebury, the burial of a woman in her mid-thirties close to the huge
southern entrance stones suggests that she was a priest of the site. She
was buried at the base of the great surrounding ditch, next to the causeway
across which pilgrims coming along the West Kennett Avenue would have entered
the henge. Prior to her interment, a fire was lit on which herbs and small
objects of chalk and bone were burnt, perhaps the contents of a medicine
pouch. She was then laid in a foetal position facing south, her body surrounded
by a circle of small sarsen stones and covered with a capstone.
Though the great henges of Avebury and Stonehenge are the most widely
known, there were many hundreds of smaller circles scattered around the
country where it seems likely that local, tribal or familial rites were
carried out. These smaller circles may have had their own resident priests
or, as in later times, they may have been tended by wandering priests, or
perhaps the celebrants were tribal elders or the heads of families. Celebrations
at some circles included fires and ritual feasting. Offerings in ritual
pits continued much as they had in the time of the tomb-shrines, as did
the ritual use of ox-skulls. Many circles include human and animal burials,
often placed near the entrances, presumably to provide spirit guardians
of the place. Such burials serve to remind us that the interface between
the worlds of the living and the dead still played an important role in
the spiritual lives of the circle-builders.
Late in the period of circle building a great change came over southern
Britain. As already mentioned, the circles of posts or stones, open to the
air, close to settlement sites, suggest the coming together of people in
large numbers for communal celebration. This in turn suggests an egalitarian
society eager to involve everyone in ritual. Then, around 2000 BCE, as Stonehenge
was achieving its final form, the building of circles ceased across the
rest of southern Britain. Indeed, those circles that already existed fell
rapidly into disuse. Stonehenge became the sole focus for communal ritual
activity south of the Wash and from east coast to west. The most likely
reason is that Stonehenge had become the possession of a powerful social,
political, spiritual and military elite whose influence extended over that
whole wide area. All roads now converged on the henge in the midst of Salisbury
Plain. All peoples were tributary to its rulers. The very nature of the
later building phases of the monument suggest this shift from egalitarianism
to elite dominance. Where Avebury and its kin are broad, open, welcoming,
Stonehenge is small and enclosed. The tight spacing of the multiple rings
of stones made it impossible for anyone outside the sacred centre to see
or hear what was happening within it. The confined space in the centre made
it impossible for more than two hundred or so to fit comfortably within
it. The major solar alignments focus on a very small area within the central
space, an area that can have been occupied by a very few people, perhaps
just one person, perhaps a sacred king. Here, rituals were attended not
by the many but by the few. We may envisage a warrior aristocracy and a
supporting priesthood occupying the centre, the latter contacting the gods
and the former making edicts that were then passed to the people gathered
outside, beyond the sacred circle. The words of the ruler or rulers, the
priests and the gods would then be carried back along trackways and trade
routes to the scattered tribes who owed allegiance to these holders of the
temple stones.
Urns and Bronze: c. 1500 - 1000 BCE
From 1500 BCE new ritual practices began to appear in southern Britain,
imported from continental Europe. During the time of the circle builders,
burials had consisted of inhumation under earthen mounds. Now bodies were
cremated, the remains being buried in cemeteries in earthenware pots, a
practice that gave the new culture its name: Urnfield. The arrival of this
burial method coincided with the introduction into Britain of hafted bronze
spears and swords. But what brought about the demise of the circle building
culture was not an influx of armed invaders but a dramatic alteration in
the climate.
From Neolithic times, farmers had been clearing areas of forest in order
to open up land for agriculture. By 1200 BCE this had left the whole of
southern Britain almost completely deforested. This led to large-scale soil
erosion that left many previously fertile areas un-farmable. It was in about
1200 BCE that the final minor adaptations to Stonehenge were made. It seems
then that the rulers of southern Britain, ruling from their sacred centre
on Salisbury Plain, had presided over the catastrophic destruction of woodland.
Our ancestors were not always great ecologists. Then, as if the manmade
blight in the south were not enough, in 1159 BCE, a huge volcanic eruption
in Iceland darkened the skies over the whole of Britain, scattering so much
ash over Scotland that it rendered the soil sterile. Across the rest of
Britain the temperature fell to such an extent that whatever meagre crops
had been grown would have been devastated. The result was famine, fear and
death. The land was so depleted already that the volcanic eruption seems
to have tipped the whole eco-system over the edge into disaster. Stonehenge
itself was finally abandoned and the age of the circles drew to an ignominious
close.
By about 1000 BCE, burials had virtually ceased and both tomb-shrines
and circles lay abandoned and overgrown.
Iron and Water: c. 1000 BCE - 43 CE
From 1000 BCE, a new form of rite appeared in which offerings to the spirit
world were given into bodies of water: lakes, peat bogs, springs or eastward-flowing
rives and streams. These offerings included items of considerable value
such as bronze cauldrons, jewellery and weapons. Often they were deliberately
broken, an act probably regarded as freeing the spirit of the object from
material existence so that it could be used in the Otherworld of the ancestral
dead.
The European Iron Age began around 800 BCE, first emerging with the Hallstatt
Culture, named after the Austrian site where its artefacts were first identified.
It occupied a relatively small area of central Europe. This is the first
culture to be identified as Celtic, a designation that needs to be used
with some caution. The term 'Celtic' was largely invented by 18th century
scholars of language and archaeology who used it to describe first, a related
group of European languages, and second, a range of cultural artefacts of
Iron Age Europe. It was derived from a tribal group, the Keltoi, said by
one classical writer to have inhabited part of central Europe around the
beginning of the Common Era. Celtic is still used to designate both a group
of languages and the pre-Roman culture of Britain and much of Continental
Europe. The majority of people within that culture would not, however, have
called themselves Celts. It wasn't until the Celtic Twilight, a literary
movement of the late 19th century, that the term came to be commonly applied
as it is now to the inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of
Man and Brittany. Prior to that time, Scots thought of themselves as Scots,
Irish as Irish, &c.
The Hallsatt Iron Age has left us illustrations of the life of the period.
Amongst depictions of warriors and weavers, we find pictures of bards playing
a type of lyre known in ancient Gaul as a chrotta. In some cases, the bards
are shown accompanied by female dancers with wide skirts and upraised arms.
A 7th century BCE 'cult-wagon' from Strettweg in Austria bears a naked goddess
who stands supporting a broad, shallow bowl above her head. She is surrounded
by smaller figures of warriors on horseback, naked youths, and stags that
may represent sacrificial animals.
A great expansion of Celtic artefacts and culture took place around 500
BCE during the La Tene period, named after a site in Switzerland. This period
is typified by highly stylised decorative metalwork, perhaps the ultimate
example of which is the Gundestrup cauldron, found in a Danish bog where
it was presumably placed as a spirit offering. Its silvered panels depict
cult scenes, animals and Celtic deities. One scene shows a giant god holding
an upended warrior above a cauldron in which he is presumably to be immersed,
probably for healing by the power of the god. Other scenes depict animal
sacrifice. The sacrifice of animals is well attested from the archaeology
of the period, as it is from the earlier periods of circles and tomb-shrines.
The first historical record of Druidry comes from classical Greek and
Roman writers of the 3rd century BCE onward, who noted the existence of
Druids among the Gauls of central and southern Europe. The Gauls were also
noted for their horsemanship, their intricate metalwork, their use of light-weight
war chariots, the quality of their woollen cloaks, and the fact that they
wore trousers, an obvious sign of barbarity to their toga-wearing neighbours.
From writers such as Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Poseidonius, and Julius Caesar
we learn that the Druids of their time believed in the transmigration of
souls, that they traced their descent from a common ancestor, and that their
social status equalled that of the highest nobility. These writers tell
us that Druids were a respected class or caste among the Celts, forming
a kind of intellectual and spiritual elite within the Celtic society of
Gaul. As mentioned above, their social standing seems to have been not unlike
that of the Brahmin caste in India. The same commentators also refer to
various sub-divisions within the Druid caste, notably bards, who were poets,
singers, musicians, genealogists and historians; vates or ovates, who were
philosophers and diviners; and Druids themselves, who were priests, spiritual
leaders, legal authorities and "natural philosophers."
It seems likely that there were many different Druidries in ancient Europe,
just as there are today. The diversity of belief and practice among pagan
Celtic peoples is demonstrated by wide variations in the type and structure
of ritual sites. Many shrines were within settlement sites, notably the
hilltop towns so characteristic of the period, with their great earthwork
ramparts topped by walls of wood or stone. These shrines were usually thatched
huts with walls of wattle and daub very like the dwelling houses surrounding
them. They were marked out by the prominence of their placing in the towns'
layout and frequently by animal burials at their thresholds, under their
walls or on the routes leading to them. They may also have been marked by
carvings of gods and sacred animals on the doorposts, though this is pure
speculation since, being made of wood, none have survived. Small figurines
of metal depicting gods and sacred animals have survived. Other shrines
were close to settlement sites but set in their own sacred space, marked
by bank and ditch and/or wooden palisades. Others were in forest groves
or close to sacred springs. Some contained standing stones marking solar
alignments, most contained burials of animals, sometimes of humans, often
located near the entrances.
A sacred space, wherever located and however marked, was called a nemeton.
This word survives in modern Irish as nemed, 'sacred.' A group of bronze
figurines from Neuvy-en-Sullias in France, dating from the 1st century CE,
consists of a chrotta-playing bard, a robed and bearded figure with his
right hand outstretched in a gesture of benediction, possibly a Druid, and
a number of naked dancers, both male and female. The group probably represents
celebrants at a religious festival of the type that may have taken place
in a nemeton. Those nemetonae that have left traces in the archaeological
record show that the most common shape for them was the rectangle, though
some were round. Similarly, the small temple-shrines sometimes found within
nemetonae were commonly rectangular, though some were circular. A goddess,
Nemetona, was presumably a patroness of sacred places in general. An inscription
from southern Britain is to Rigonemetonis, 'king of the sacred place,' perhaps
a consort to Nemetona. Shrines seem to have been dedicated to just one or
two deities, at most a small group. Others would have been to honour local
spirits of place. Some, particularly those closer to Greek and Roman influence,
held stone images of gods and sacred animals, monsters and severed heads.
The latter remind us that the Celts of this period were headhunters, collecting
and preserving the heads of enemies slain in battle for display. The head
was viewed as the repository of personal power, of the individual soul,
so that to possess the head meant in some way to possess the spiritual power
of the person.
Just as in modern India, there were many hundreds of gods in ancient Europe:
gods of tribe or family, household gods, spirits of place or of the elemental
landscape. However, a few gods and goddesses seem to have been almost pan-Celtic
suggesting that Druids may have had a common pantheon of their own, since
Druids were the only social group able to move freely across tribal boundaries.
Examples of such apparently pan-Celtic deities include Lugos (Irish 'Lugh,'
Welsh 'Lleu'), youthful god of the sun, light and fire; Nodens (Ir. 'Nuada,'
W. 'Nudd'), Otherworld lord, warrior god and patron of healing; Belenos
(Ir. 'Balor,' W. 'Beli'), solar grandfather god; Don (Ir. 'Danu'), primeval
river goddess and mother of the gods; and a group of three goddesses called
the Matronae, 'Mothers.'
Druids and Romans: c. 43 CE- 410 CE
We know from Julius Caesar that Druids from wide areas met together regularly
at nemetonae and that students from other parts of Europe travelled to Britain
to receive instruction in Druidry, believing the craft to have originated
in Britain and to be found there in its purest form. Other writers refer
to Druids conducting divination by studying the entrails of sacrificial
victims or the flight or speech of oracular birds, both practices widely
known throughout the ancient world. The 1st century Roman author, Pliny
the Elder, gives a famous account of white-clad Druids climbing oak trees
to cut sacred mistletoe from them using a gold sickle. The mistletoe was
caught in a white cloth by attendants waiting below. Two white bulls were
sacrificed during this rite. Some Roman writers accused Druids of overseeing
human sacrifice on a huge scale. Among such accounts are descriptions of
huge wickerwork figures in which humans and animals were said to have been
burned. No evidence of such mass burnings has ever been found. The best
evidence for human sacrifice comes from the Iron Age bodies found preserved
in peat bogs in Britain and Europe. Some of these do seem to have been ritually
slain and deposited into watery marshes in keeping with the ritual practice
of the period. Since classical writers tell us that the Celts believed in
an afterlife of great joy, abundance and beauty, it is quite possible that
these sacrificial victims went voluntarily to their deaths.
The relationship of Britain with the Roman Empire was a complex one. Britons
have always traded across the narrow English Channel with their neighbours
in continental Europe. When Gaul, modern France, was subsumed into the Roman
Empire trade continued, with tribal leaders in southern Britain importing
Roman wines, table ware and other luxury items. Hence, when Julius Caesar
decided to invade Britain in 55 BCE as part of his attempt to win political
favour at home, he may have expected to meet with a more friendly reception
than he actually did. In fact, the local population rose against him en
masse and fought the legions to a standstill, skilfully deploying their
light, swift chariot fighters against the slow-moving foot soldiers of Rome.
Eventually, Julius was forced to make terms that saw him and the legions
departing back over the Channel. Britain was not conquered by Rome for another
hundred years, when the Emperor Claudius, again largely for domestic political
reasons, sent a huge army of occupation that went all along southern England
besieging and destroying all the fortified hilltop settlements they came
to.
The year 60 CE was a significant one in the history of Druidry. Boudicca,
ruler of the Iceni, was leading a revolt against the Roman occupiers, destroying
whole cities with the ferocity of her onslaught. Her rage was understandable.
A Roman governor had had her husband killed and Boudicca herself beaten
while she was forced to watch her two daughters being raped. Having raised
an army to her cause she was exacting a terrible revenge. Meanwhile, a large
part of the Roman army was in north Wales, launching an attack on the island
of Anglesey. Why? Because Anglesey was a stronghold of Druidry and Druids
were seen as problematic because of the respect in which they were held
by the native population, including the chiefs of all the tribes, each of
whom had Druids as advisers and counsellors. Tacitus has left us a description
of the legions, many of whom were Celtic conscripts from Roman Gaul, lining
up on the shore facing Anglesey. They were greeted by the sight of Druids
standing on the high places along the opposite shore, raising their arms
and hurling curses at the opposing force. Between them ran screaming women
bearing blazing torches, clothed in tattered black robes. These women must
surely have been priests of some British battle goddess equivalent to the
Irish Badb, 'Scaldcrow.' The troops stood rooted to the spot in terror until
their captains threatened them with death if they didn't attack. When they
did cross the narrow strait and came amongst the Druids of Anglesey, they
slaughtered everyone they found in a frenzy of blood lust, burning the sacred
groves and destroying the altars.
The Boudiccan rebellion was put down and the avenging Roman army burnt
many native shrines across southern Britain. The political influence of
Druidry was curtailed, but it certainly did not cease to exist, particularly
in Scotland and Ireland, which remained beyond the reach of the legions.
In the rest of Britain, many Romano-British temples were built on the sites
of earlier Celtic shrines, and native deities were often worshipped in these
temples side-by-side with the gods of Rome. In at least some cases we can
assume that local priests, i.e. Druids, tended these shrines. Although a
series of edicts from Roman emperors outlawed Druidry, it seems unlikely
that these edicts were enforced, certainly not among the several tribes
friendly to the Roman occupation. It is probable then that Druids continued
to practice throughout Britain, adapting themselves to the Roman way of
life as much as the rest of the population did. The conquered people abandoned
their hill forts and moved into new towns, built on the Roman model. Given
the comparative comfort of the Roman dwellings, they were presumably happy
to do so. However, there is some evidence that the sites of former shrines
within the hill forts were still regarded as sacred.
The coming of Christianity, which first reached Britain about 200 CE,
did not put an end to Druidry either. Many pagan Romano-British temples
continued in use for a further three centuries. One example is the shrine
at the Iron Age hill fort of Maiden Castle in Dorset, which was rebuilt
in the early 5th century, right at the end of the Roman period. When Christianity
did eventually achieve dominance, many pagan sites and popular rites were
adapted to Christian usage. The Druidic colleges reputed to have existed
in Britain and Ireland and in Gaul seem to have re-emerged as bardic colleges,
as centres of secular learning, or, perhaps, as Christian monasteries. Those
pagan gods who were particularly hard for folk to abandon were re-envisioned
as Christian saints. After the priestly functions of the old Druid caste
had been more or less entirely taken over by Christian priests, much of
the former reverence for the pagan priesthood transferred to the bardic
order, which, as we have seen, had been a part of the Druid caste in Iron
Age Europe. Bardic initiates continued to compose goddess-inspired poetry
and to preserve the sacred lore of their pagan predecessors, while, from
the 6th century onward, Christian scribes began to record pagan myths and
legends in writing.
Light in the Dark Ages: c. 410 - 1200
The period from about 410-700 CE is often referred to as the Dark Ages.
Pagan invaders swept across Europe, threatening the might of the Roman Empire,
now at least nominally Christian. Britain, having enjoyed the protection
of being part of that Empire for almost four centuries, now found itself
cast adrift from the central authority of Rome and invaded by pagan Saxons,
Angles, Jutes and others from the Continent. They took land from Romanised
Britons across southern and eastern Britain. They introduced their own deities,
chief among whom was Woden. Around 500, the Saxon advance was halted by
a great battle at Mount Badon. The victorious leader of the British at this
battle is reputed to have been one Artorius, or Arthur, whom later legends
depict as the great king of the Britons. During these troubled times Celtic
scholars, particularly those of Ireland, were famed throughout Europe for
the depth and diversity of their learning. They translated the great works
of classical antiquity and composed treatises on subjects ranging from astronomy
to zoology. Their love of learning seems to have been a direct inheritance
from their pagan Druid predecessors.
The same period saw a great literary flowering in the bardic colleges,
producing the poetry of such legendary figures as Taliesin, Myrddhin, whose
story Geoffrey of Monmouth later wove into his romantic figure of Merlin,
magician to King Arthur, and Aneirin, whose great work, The Gododdin, is
perhaps the earliest surviving British poem.
The historical Taliesin was court bard to Urien, ruler of the large kingdom
of Rheged that covered much of northwest England. His poetry dealt mainly
with the struggles of his lord against the Anglo-Saxon enemy who established
their own kingdoms along the east coast. Taliesin's name was also attached
to a body of mystical poetry produced in later centuries, including such
famous works as Cad Goddeu, 'The Battle of the Trees.'
Myrddhin Wyllt, 'Myrddhin the Wild,' was court bard to Gwenddoleu who
ruled a territory north of Hadrian's Wall. Gwenddoleu and all his warband
were killed in a bloody battle followed by a protracted siege in 573. Myrrdhin
was the sole survivor and what he had witnessed drove him mad. He withdrew
into the wild crags of the Forest of Celyddon, foraging for food and keeping
company with wild animals. He was offered sanctuary by Rhydderch Hael, the
ruler who had killed Gwenddoleu, but Myrddhin found it impossible to live
with people and returned to the wild forest where he remained for the rest
of his days, developing a reputation as an inspired prophet.
Aneirin was a Bard, probably the Chief Bard, at the court of Mynyddog
Mwynfawr ('the Generous'), whose principle seat was at Din Eidyn, the present-day
Edinburgh. Mynyddog was a chieftain of the Gododdin tribe, whose kingdom
bordered on both Rheged and Bernicia. About the year 600, Mynyddog, after
having feasted his three hundred warriors for a year at his court, along
with others who had rallied to his cause, sent them south, down the old
Roman road to Catraeth, to attempt to retake it from the Angles under their
ruler, Aethelfrith. The Angles are said by Aneirin to have numbered either
54,000 or 100,000, though we must allow for some poetic exaggeration here.
In spite of overwhelming odds, the Gododdin fighters are said to have slain
some 2,000 Angles before they themselves were cut down, leaving just three
survivors, and Aneirin himself, who tells us he survived "with my blood
streaming down, by virtue of my brilliant poetry." The stanza translated
below gives a fine description of the war party that descended on Catraeth.
Men went to Catraeth for battle and for war, On mighty steeds; the men-at-arms
with their shields, And gallant, thrusting spears, and sharpened lances,
And their mail coats shining, and their swordsmanship Surpassing; piercing
through whole armies. Five times fifty fell before the sword Of Rhufawn
Tall, who gave gold on the altars, And gifts of beauteous omen-stones to
poets.
The poetry of Aneirin clearly exhibits the social functions of the bards
of his time. He combines the roles of historian and entertainer, while his
praise for fallen heroes helps to maintain the respect in which the warrior
aristocracy must be held in order for the social hierarchy to survive.
The great collection of Welsh myths and legends known as The Mabinogion
probably achieved written form during the 9th century as the result of a
conscious decision on the part of north Welsh kings to have their bards
preserve as much as they could of the lore of their ancestors. Great Irish
epics such as Lebor Gabala Erinn, 'The Book of the Taking of Ireland,' and
Tain bo Cuailgne, 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley' were written down in the same
century. In both countries, this activity of collection and preservation
may have been spurred by increasing attacks from Viking raiders. Texts compiled
at this period contain a good deal of information about pagan gods and heroes
and about Druids and Druidry, being written at a time when Druids not only
still existed but retained at least some of their ancient influence.
The kings of Cashel in Southern Ireland held a great tribal assembly every
seven years. As late as the 10th century, they were still receiving a 'gift'
of a Druid from one of their sub-clans at these assemblies. These Druids
would act, as their predecessors had done since time immemorial, as advisors
to the king. In Wales, as late as the 12th century bards wrote of Druids
as still extant.
Survival and Revival: c. 1200 - 1900
Under the patronage of the old Celtic noble families, many of whom traced
their ancestry back to pagan Celtic deities, bardic colleges continued to
flourish until the 17th century in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. As well
as preserving poetry and prose, legends, histories and genealogies, the
bardic colleges also retained some curious magical practices of a distinctly
pagan flavour. In Ireland, bards were taught secret languages and ciphers
that used the Ogham alphabet, a script invented in Ireland in the 2nd or
3rd century CE. They also preserved knowledge of ancient methods of divination,
some of which involved animal sacrifice. In Ireland, Wales and Scotland,
bardic colleges used a technique for incubating poems called "the cell
of song." A bard would be given a subject on which to compose a poem.
He would then be laid on a wattle bed in a closed, windowless cell for a
day and a night, sometimes with a cloth wrapped around his head. In this
state of sensory deprivation the bard would seek inspiration. After 24 hours
a light would be brought in and the bard would write down the poem that
had come to him in the darkness.
The Flight of the Earls from Ireland in 1607 left bardic colleges there
bereft of patronage and with their survival in doubt. Some, however, did
survive for a further hundred years, and even when the last was gone, the
bardic tradition found ways to continue. Bardic courts were established
where bards set and maintained standards of composition and knowledge. When,
in the 18th century, anti-Gaelic feeling among Ireland's English overlords
made the continuation of the courts impossible, the bardic tradition was
continued in secret in 'hedge schools,' carried by wandering minstrels and
supported by less noble patrons. In Wales, the accession to the English
throne of the Welsh Tudor dynasty accelerated the decline of the colleges.
Many of the aristocratic patrons of the bards moved to London, the centre
of power, either taking their bards with them or leaving them to fend for
themselves. Some Welsh bardic colleges may have found new patronage from
monastic foundations. Other bards survived, as did their Irish counterparts,
either by working for less exalted patrons, by teaching in the hedgerows
and performing in taverns. In Scotland, the clan system that had supported
the bardic colleges collapsed under the suppression that followed a series
of rebellions by the Scots against the Act of Union of 1707. With the closure
of the last of the colleges, it seemed that the last vestiges of organized
Druidry were about to be lost forever.
Then, the 18th century saw a Druid Revival in England and Wales, inspired
by the writings of antiquaries such as John Aubrey (1629-1697), John Toland
(1670-1722), and William Stukely (1687-1765). Aubrey was the first modern
writer to put forward the idea that Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments
were built by Druids. He was also the first person to make surveys of Stonehenge
and Avebury. On the strength of this, some modern Druid groups have claimed
him as an Archdruid. Toland was an Irish revolutionary who, as a young man,
met Aubrey and was fascinated by his views on Druids and stone circles.
Toland wrote a book in which he expounded his own theories on the subject
and expanded on those of the older writer. With the arrogance of youth,
Toland failed to mention Aubrey as his source. On the strength of Toland's
book, he too has been claimed as an Archdruid. The Ancient Druid Order (ADO)
claim that Toland held a gathering of Druids from all over Britain and Ireland
in a London tavern in 1717. Odd then that Toland should have written only
a year later that:
"No heathen priesthood ever came up to the perfection of the Druidical
which was far more exquisite than any other such system: as having been
much better calculated to beget ignorance, and an explicit disposition in
the people, no less than to procure power and profit to the priests... To
arrive at perfection in sophistry requires a long habit, as well as in juggling,
in which last they were very expert: but to be masters of both, and withal
to learn the art of managing the mob, which is vulgarly called leading the
people by the nose, demands abundant study and exercise."
These are the words of a man who clearly felt nothing but contempt for
all priesthoods, including the Druidic, a contempt he repeats over and again
in his writings with a vehemence perhaps only possible in a rebellious lapsed
Catholic such as he. If, as seems clear, we must dismiss Toland as an Archdruid,
we should also question whether the supposed Primrose Hill gathering ever
took place. It can surely be no coincidence that the first Grand Lodge of
Freemasonry was founded on June 24th, 1717, the very day that Toland's supposed
Druid gathering took place, also in London, also in a tavern.
William Stukeley was an antiquarian much in the mould of John Aubrey.
Stukeley too made field trips to Avebury and Stonehenge and made surveys
and drawings of both sites. He agreed with Aubrey on the Druidic nature
of megalithic monuments. However, public interest in Druidry had waned and
Stukeley found it difficult to find publishers for his writings. Instead,
he took holy orders and became a clergyman. Once settled into his parish,
his ideas regarding Druidry became increasingly eccentric. He had the vicarage
garden redesigned in his idea of a Druid grove, complete with megalithic
folly. He began to expound Druidic principles from the pulpit of his church
and he started to sign letters "Chyndonax, Druid of Mount Haemus."
The late 18th century saw the Druid revival kick-started by a group of
gentlemen who met at another London tavern in 1781 to found the Ancient
Order of Druids. Foremost among them was Henry Hurle. Hurle's group seems
to have incorporated a lot of Masonic ideas, including those of mutual support,
charitable good works and men-only lodges.
Shortly after the founding of the AOD, the Druid revival gained new vitality
through the work of an extraordinary Welsh visionary, poet, scholar, charlatan
and laudanum addict, Edward Williams (1747-1822), better known by his Bardic
name, Iolo Morganwg. His writings, some of which were published as The Iolo
Manuscripts (1848), and Barddas (1862), remain influential in the Druid
movement to the present day. He claimed to have found a complete system
of Druidry in ancient manuscripts he had collected in his native Wales.
Using them as a basis, Iolo established or, as he claimed, re-established
what he styled the Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain. Iolo's Gorsedd
held its first public rite on Primrose Hill in London at the summer solstice
of 1792 in a stone circle made up of pebbles Iolo had gathered on a beach
in south Wales. In fact, he had composed the 'ancient' manuscripts himself,
beginning while he was imprisoned for debt after a business enterprise failed.
His forgeries were good enough to fool the finest scholars of his day and
continued to be regarded as genuine until 150 years after his death, when
an inquisitive researcher went through Iolo's manuscripts and found draft
versions of many of the supposedly medieval documents written in Iolo's
own hand. In spite of the exposure of this massive literary fraud, the rituals
Iolo devised for his Gorsedd of the Bards are still performed in August
each year as part of the Welsh Royal National Eisteddfod, while the Gorsedd
Prayer he composed is still used by several modern Druid groups. As well
as his Druidic forgeries, Iolo was a fine poet, both under his own name
and those of several medieval bards. He was also a fervent supporter of
the French and American Revolutions.
The Druid groups formed by the 18th-century revivalists tended to blend
classical Druidry with Christianity, and even attempted to present pagan
Druids as pre-Christian Christians. Central to most of the revival groups
of this period was the Sun as symbol of Divine Light. The membership of
most groups was either wholly or predominantly male. As we have seen, some
had links with revolutionary politics, unorthodox Christianity, or Freemasonry.
The 19th century saw a remarkable flourishing of scholarship in the field
of Celtic studies, which again provided renewed impetus to the Druid movement.
Notable landmarks included the publication of Godfrey Higgins' highly unreliable
The Celtic Druids in 1829, the first English translation of The Mabinogion
by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1849, and the publication and translation of
much of the poetic heritage of the medieval Welsh bards in W. F. Skene's,
The Four Ancient Books of Wales in 1868.
The 19th century also produced its notable eccentrics, perhaps the most
colourful being Dr. William Price of Llantrisant in Glamorgan. Price was
born in 1800. His understanding of Druidry was highly individual, involving
his dressing in a variety of bizarre costumes including a red woollen jump
suit embroidered with green silk lettering, and a fox skin headdress. He
would roam the countryside of Wales seeking out non-conformist chapels where
he would offer his services as a lay preacher. He would then launch into
lengthy and vigorous sermons espousing his version of Druidry, often ending
by stripping off all his clothes causing his scandalised congregations to
flee for the exits. When in his 80s, Price had a son whom he named Iesu
Grist, much to the consternation of local Christian clergymen and their
flocks. When little Iesu Grist died aged only five months, Dr. Price insisted
that he be cremated in keeping with his belief that this was the correct
Druidic way to assign a soul to the Otherworld. Unfortunately, cremation
was not legal at the time. Ignoring this, Price built a funeral pyre for
his baby on a hillside and set it ablaze. He was promptly arrested and put
on trial. He conducted his own defence and was acquitted, as a result of
which cremation was legally recognized, a fact Price himself was able to
benefit from when he died in 1893.
The latter part of the 19th century saw the emergence of the so-called
Celtic Twilight, as expressed in the poetic writings of such visionary mystics
as William Butler Yeats and 'AE' (George Russell) in Ireland, and 'Fiona
MacLeod' (William Sharp) in Scotland. The heritage of the Celtic Twilight
was to set the image of the mystical Celt firmly in the public imagination,
but also to spur another flurry of scholarship in the field of Celtic studies
that ran through into the 20th century. This produced popular and widely
available translations and re-tellings of Celtic myths by Kuno Meyer, Alfred
Nutt, Lady Gregory, John Rhys, Charles Squire, T. W. Rolleston and others.
Modern Druidry: c. 1900 - Date
The Druid tradition underwent further revision throughout the 20th century,
one early landmark being the initiation of a young Winston Churchill into
a lodge of the Ancient Order of Druids in 1908. The following year saw the
foundation of An Uileach Druidh Braithreachas, also known as the British
Circle of the Universal Bond, also known as the Ancient Druid Order. This
seems to have been largely the brainchild of George Watson MacGregor Reid,
second Chosen Chief of the Order, whose other big idea was the tonic drink
Sanatogen. His inspirations for the ADO seem to have been many and varied.
One was the Victorian magical society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn, which numbered W. B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley among its members.
Another was the Theosphical Society, founded by an eccentric but highly
charismatic Russian spiritualist, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Others were
Buddhism and the writings of Greek Gnostic Christians. MacGregor Reid was
a true universalist, seeing truth in all religions, hence the eclectic nature
of his ceremonies. Druids sometimes performed these in the traditional white
robes topped off with somewhat less traditional outsize turbans. During
one oration, he invoked in turn angels of the Lord, Druid ancestors and
ascended Tibetan Masters. He came into noisy conflict with the then owners
and with the police when he objected to being charged for admission to Stonehenge.
This is a tradition still carried on by some Druids at the present day.
A different vision of Druidry was presented through the writings of Lewis
Spence, Ross Nichols and others. Spence was the author of a series of popular
works on Celtic mythology, folklore and magic during the 1930s and 1940s,
some of which are still regularly reprinted. Nichols was a member of the
Ancient Druid Order and a friend of Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern
Wicca and a fellow member of the ADO. From researches into folklore, members
of Gardner's coven devised the eightfold festival cycle now celebrated by
most Pagans. Nichols offered the idea to the ADO hierarchy but they refused,
being happy to continue celebrating just the summer solstice and the spring
and autumn equinoxes. Gardner incorporated the eight festivals into his
Wiccan writings in the 1950s while Nichols introduced them into Druidry
through the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), founded by Nichols
and others in 1964 when he led a breakaway from the Ancient Druid Order.
In 1963, modern pagan Druidry emerged in the United States with the foundation
of the Reformed Druids of North America. The RDNA was begun by a group of
university students in Minnesota who were disgruntled at the university
rule that said all students had to attend religious services. They reasoned
that, since they had no choice over attendance, they could at least choose
their religion. So they created RDNA Druidry. Much to their surprise, it
caught on and they soon had a dozen active groves across seven states.
The global cultural explosion that was the 1960s sparked, among other
things, a new level of interest in occultism, mysticism and spirituality.
Much of this interest was directed towards Eastern faiths: Buddhism, Taoism,
Hinduism, but there were some whose spiritual explorations led them towards
native European traditions including Druidry. A book by John Michell, The
View Over Atlantis, stimulated a revival of interest in ley lines, a concept
first developed in the 1920s by Alfred Watkins in his book, The Old Straight
Track. Watkins defined ley lines as straight trackways laid out across prehistoric
Britain linking together standing stones, stone circles, burial mounds and
other features of the landscape. By the mid-1970s a whole new discipline
had been created, bearing the name Earth Mysteries. Many of its proponents
came to see ley lines as channels of earth energy or as paths followed by
UFOs. The widespread public interest in Earth Mysteries led more people
to explore native spiritual traditions.
When Ross Nichols died in 1975, OBOD effectively ceased to exist. However,
in the late 1980s it was revived by Philip Carr-Gomm, himself initiated
into the Order by Nichols in the late 1960s in a ceremony on Glastonbury
Tor in Somerset. Under Carr-Gomm's gentle leadership and inspired by his
talents as a writer and facilitator, OBOD has grown to be the largest Druid
Order in the world with some 2000 members currently taking its mail order
courses and some 5000 initiates.
Philip Shallcrass became conscious of a calling to Druidry in 1974 after
reading Robert Graves' 1961 book, The White Goddess. Failing to find an
existing group to join, Shallcrass had the idea of creating a new Druid
Order in 1977. He joined a coven of Alexandrian Wiccans the following year.
By 1979 the group had dropped so much material from the Wiccan handbook,
the Book of Shadows, and adopted so many elements of Druid belief and practice
that they decided to stop calling themselves a coven and call themselves
a grove instead, the standard designation for a Druid gathering. This Grove
of the Badger was the Mother Grove of what was to become the British Druid
Order. The cross-fertilisation between the traditions of Wicca or Witchraft
and Druidry, first seen in the friendship between Ross Nichols and Gerald
Gardner, has continued. Emma Restall Orr, who became joint chief of the
British Druid Order in 1995, and the founder of the Insular Order of Druids,
Dylan ap Thuin, both have backgrounds in Witchcraft. The increasing numbers
of Druids with training in Witchcraft has been a significant factor in shifting
Druidry away from the patriarchal image set in the 18th century and towards
a more pagan form.
In 1983, a member of the RDNA's grove at the University of California
in Berkeley, Philip Isaac Bonewits, founded a new, more overtly pagan group
which he called Ar nDraoicht Fein, A Druid Fellowship. ADF was noted for
its sense of humour and its scholarly approach, both derived from the personality
of its founder. Many other American groups have since emerged as offshoots
from ADF, most successful among them being the Henge of Keltria, founded
in 1988, of which the writer Ellen Evert Hopman was one of the more prominent
members before founding her own group.
The 1980s saw the formation of the Council of British Druid Orders with
the intention of bringing together the heads of various Druid Orders to
discuss issues of mutual interest. Some members saw it as being mainly concerned
with problems surrounding access to Stonehenge. Others saw it as an opportunity
to explore broader issues of belief and practice. It brought together a
disparate group of Orders ranging from the oldest, the Ancient Order of
Druids, to newer, more overtly pagan groups such as the British Druid Order,
via Orders whose main interest seemed to be arguing with English Heritage,
the official guardians of Stonehenge. By the mid-1990s the tensions between
the various groups reached breaking point and the Ancient Druid Order, the
British Druid Order and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids all resigned.
The Council continues, though without the support of so many of the largest
Orders it can no longer be seen as representative of the broad spectrum
of British Druidry. Following a successful first gathering in Avebury in
1996, the Druid Forum has emerged, in which folk from different Orders come
together in peace to explore Druidry. Learning from the mistakes of the
Council of British Druid Orders, the Druid Forum has no appointed officers
and no interest in political lobbying.
The process of re-inventing the tradition continues at the present day
through writers and practitioners such as the singer and folklorist R. J.
Stewart and the prolific John and Caitlin Matthews, who, with Philip Shallcrass,
Emma Restall Orr and others, have been instrumental in re-introducing 'shamanic'
practices into modern Druidry. In so doing, they seem to be restoring the
role of Druid to something close to its ancient form, that of the walker
between worlds, mediating between them for the benefit of their communities.
This 'shamanic' Druidry works directly with spirits of place, of the land,
of trees, plants, animals and ancestors. It has been inspired partly by
the discovery of 'shamanic' practices described in the medieval literature
of Ireland and Wales but also by study of, and contact with, other indigenous
earth-ancestor spiritualities. Native American practice has been particularly
influential. The living example of Lakota sweat lodge ceremonies led to
the re-introduction of sweat lodges into Druidry. Britain and Ireland have
a native sweat lodge tradition that dates back at least to the Bronze Age,
but it had been lost until its reintroduction in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, the new pagan and 'shamanic' Druidry took on the role of
the acceptable face of contemporary paganism, exploiting the positive public
image of Druidry to work for a broader acceptance of paganism in general.
One flowering of this was the establishment of the Gorsedd of Bards of Caer
Abiri among the stones of the Avebury Henge in Wiltshire at the autumn equinox
of 1993. With a ceremony composed by Philip Shallcrass, the Gorsedd grew
within two years to a gathering of over four hundred that included members
of several Druid groups along with Witches, Heathens, Christians and large
numbers of non-aligned pagans. This broad community were coming to Druid
priests to be handfasted, to have their children blessed and to celebrate
the turning of the wheel of the year. The Avebury Gorsedd offered a unique
opportunity for many pagans to celebrate festival rites publicly and it
attracted a good deal of favourable publicity.
As more people became aware of the new Druidry, it attracted a radical
wing that took an active role in the road protest movements of the 1990s.
One of the strongest trends in Druidry through the 1990s was the growth
of ecological awareness and activism. Such concerns come naturally to a
philosophy that has always regarded trees, stones, springs, rivers, lakes,
hills and mountains as sacred and imbued with spirit. Part of this ecological
movement has led many Druids to rediscover sacred sites in their own neighbourhood
and to find appropriate ways of working with those sites both in spirit
and in active conservation. This represents something of a return to the
localised cults that flourished in pre-Christian times.
Part of the role of the Druid as walker between the worlds has shown itself
as an interest in building bridges between different faith groups. Druids
such as Tim Sebastian of the Secular Order of Druids and Emma Restall Orr
have been instrumental in bringing together representatives of many spiritual
paths in interfaith gatherings and conferences throughout the 80s and 90s.
This is a process that seems set to continue and gain in strength. The same
focus on bridge building has led Druids to become actively involved in discussions
with statutory bodies concerned with access to, and the conservation of,
ancient sacred sites.
Ideas of Druidry are constantly being revised both by the practical experience
of those involved in it, and in the light of new archaeological research
and new techniques for exploring and understanding the past. But the Druidry
of today, while it draws heavily on the past, is very different from the
Druidry of 5000, or even 500 years ago, and this is as it should be, for
a static tradition is a dying tradition, and Druidry is very much alive.
Throughout its history, Druidry has changed and adapted in response to circumstances.
Each century re-creates the tradition to satisfy its own needs. The fundamental
needs of our own age are to find personal harmony and balance amid increasing
technological and cultural chaos, and to preserve the ecological balance
of our hard-pressed Mother Earth. Modern Druidry seeks to address both these
needs.
Current estimates suggest that there are between eight and ten thousand
initiated members of Druid orders in Britain alone, divided between about
thirty groups. These groups vary in size from one or two persons up to thousands.
Some are locally based, others are international. Druid groups also exist
in the USA, Australia, France and many other countries. Membership consists
of equal numbers of women and men. Beyond the membership of these groups
there is a much broader interest in Druidry demonstrated by the fact that
there now seem to be more publications available on the subject than at
any other time in its history. This is clear evidence of the way in which
Druidry continues to resonate in the modern mind, echoing the deep-seated
need for a spirituality rooted in the past yet appropriate to the present
while holding the opportunity to create a better future.
Where Druidry will go from here is difficult to predict. At present, the
tradition is in a state of simultaneous flux and rapid expansion. Recent
publications on Druidry by Druids have become less self-consciously 'New
Age' or whacky. Druidry is now discussed at academic conferences as a serious
component of modern religious culture. Public interest continues to grow,
as do numbers joining Druid groups and the number of groups there are for
them to choose from. This interest is focused mainly on the younger, more
pagan Druid groups, while membership of the older, more staid groups is
either stable or decreasing. The Welsh Gorsedd of Bards bucks this trend
by continuing to go its own way, as a cultural rather than a spiritual institution,
now irrevocably linked to the annual National Eisteddfod.
One of the most interesting developments in Druidry in recent years has
been the emergence of Druid camps. These events, pioneered by the British
Druid Order and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, take place in Britain,
America, Australia and elsewhere, yet they have many aspects in common.
They all have a central structure where camp meetings will be held, usually
first thing in the morning. They usually have rustic showers and hot tubs,
often a sauna. There is a central ritual space, with other, quieter ritual
areas away from the main camp. Rituals themselves follow similar patterns,
with a circle being marked out, the four cardinal directions honoured, and
invocations to the gods and ancestors. Music, poetry and storytelling feature
strongly, both in rituals and in their own right, sometimes in the form
of eisteddfod competitions, often as a spontaneous part of campfire evenings
under the stars. Camps offer a range of talks and workshops on a common
range of subjects, including basic introductions to Druidry, divination,
astrology, earth mysteries, ritual, and the bardic arts. Perhaps we see
here the renaissance of a kind of global Druidry.
Towards the beginning of this essay, I suggested that the ancient Druids
might have had a range of beliefs and practices that included yet transcended
the localised tribal faiths of prehistoric Europe. Perhaps the global similarity
between Druid camps heralds a re-awakening of that uniformity within diversity
that allowed Druids from all nations to gather together with at least a
fair chance for mutual understanding. Time will tell.
By Philip Shallcrass
Chief of The British Druid Order
(copyright BDO 2003)
This is a thoroughly revised and expanded version of section 2 of A
Druid Directory, edited by Philip Shallcrass and Emma Restall
Orr, BDO, Devizes, 2001
