DruidryThe first part of this page is from the UK Pagan Federation website  Many Pagan Druid orders draw their inspiration from Celtic traditions, working with the Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic Pagan past. Some work with whatever spirits are within and around the people they are working with. So when in America, for example, they honour the spirits of that land; when at Wayland's Smithy they might honour the Old Gods of the builders and the Anglo-Saxon Wayland. Also, they might be drawn to particular deities, regardless of tradition or culture, because of their own cultural/spiritual background or because these deities seek them out. (Thanks to Philip Shalcrass of the BDO for this amendment) Druidry stresses the mystery of poetic inspiration and explores healing, divination and sacred mythology. However, not all Druid orders are Pagan. Some are charitable organisations. Others follow particular esoteric teachings not necessarily sympathetic to Pagan beliefs, and some Druid orders are of an artistic or Christian nature.
Following the problems at Stonehenge in 1988, The Council of British Druid Orders was founded as a focus for communication between the various different groups. Some Pagan-sympathetic member orders are: The Glastonbury Order of Druids, which works with the Glastonbury mythos; The London Druid group, founded in 1986 which has associated Celtic and magickal groups; and the Druid Clan of Dana, a daughter organisation of the Fellowship of Isis. The British Druid Order founded in 1979, which is both Pagan and Goddess orientated, and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, which has both Christian and Pagan members left the CBDO to form the Druid Forum, which meets to discuss issues of relevance to modern Druidry. A Druid explains: 'Druidry has no book of law, the only lessons being those learnt from nature. There are no gurus and hierarchy is kept to a working minimum. Central to Druidic belief is a love of nature combined with the pragmatic view that spiritual insight should be expressed in daily life. Druidry stresses the importance of working as a part of a group and working as an individual to develop the spiritual life. Druidry is especially concerned with the ecological crisis faced by the modern world, and works in many ways for the healing of the Earth. Druidry represents another branch of the flourishing tree of Pagan spirituality. Druidry grows from strength to strength, answering in its own voice the call of the Divine. 'O knowledgeable lad, whose son are you?' 'I am the son of Poetry Poetry, son of scrutiny Scrutiny, son of meditation Meditation, son of lore Lore, son of enquiry Enquiry, son of investigation Investigation, son of great knowledge Great knowledge, son of great sense Great sense, son of understanding Understanding, son of wisdom Wisdom, son of the triple Gods of poetry.' (The Colloquy of the Two Sages- Celtic Traditional)
History of Druids  The fullest account of the druids and their religion is that given by Julius Caesar in his history of his wars in Gaul in 59-51 BC. Caesar is insistent that druidism originated in Britain, although there is no necessity to believe that all the features of the religion as it was practised in Gaul were present in Britain. Interpreting druidism is difficult, for the druids refused to commit anything about their beliefs and rituals to writing, and modern inquirers are obliged to rely on the accounts of the classical authors who have a tendency to concentrate upon the ghoulish, the bizarre and the malign. Later evidence in the early literature of Wales, and more particularly in that of Ireland, can be useful, although what has been preserved went through a process of selection and modification by Christian scribes.
The essence of druidism seems to have been a kind of pantheism, and links have been discerned between it and some aspects of Hinduisim. The names of some 400 gods are known, most of whom seem to have had a very localised cult. The correct performance of ritual was central to the religion, and the prescribed pattern of ceremonies presumably constituted the greater part of the 20-year training undertaken by a apprentice druid. Human sacrifice was practised. When the druids of Anglesey were attacked by the Romans in AD 61, their altars, according to Tacitus, 'were drenched with the blood of prisoners'. As the Romans considered druidism to be a nationalistic religion underpinning British resistance to the Empire, they were determined to suppress it. In the 18th century, with the growing interest in natural religion and in 'the noble savage', druidism captured the imagination of the European intelligentsia. In Wales, the Welsh poetic tradition was believed to have been inherited from the druids, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) succeeded in 1820 in grafting druidical ceremonies of his own devising upon the cultural festival, the eisteddfod, an association which has lasted until today. Knowledge was one of the highly-prized possessions of Celtic society and was taught by one of the highest classes of society which consisted of the Druid priesthood, the Vates or Uates, who performed magic and divination, and the Bards. There were also female prophetesses, who were priestesses of particular Goddesses. These were called Veledas or Ueledas among the Gauls and by titles such as Banfili, female seer, among the Irish. Veledas often occupied sacred grooves or caves, similar to those of their Greek sisters at the Oracle of Delphi. The Druids, Vates and Bards were teachers, historians, astronomers and poets. They controlled the legal system, acted as judges and supervised executions. Each Druid was required to learn by heart the whole of their law, teaching, poetry, story, myth, religious observance, astronomy, astrology, genealogy and tribal history. This could take up to 20 years. The Druids also had a fearsome reputation for magic. They were believed to have the ability to raise storms, winds and mists, and to make the Sun stand still in its course. They could divine the secret names of the Gods of their enemies and call these out in battle to make the opposing tribes tremble with fear. In the middle of a war, they could command the opposing factions to lay down their arms. More than 2,000 years ago, in the area we know now as Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, Druid priests capitalized upon such fears by nurturing the belief that evil spirits were responsible for bringing about the advent of cold weather and shorter hours of daylight. To placate the spirits, the priests initiated a festival honoring Samhain, the lord of the dead. The festival was on Oct. 31, the day before the beginning of the Celtic new year. This "new year's eve" celebration gradually grew to ominous proportions. The priests ordered the people to extinguish all hearth fires and to gather around huge bonfires on hilltops. The fires were intended to frighten away the evil spirits and to honor the souls of people who had died during the past year. Religious rituals performed around the bonfires were followed by processions back into the villages, where embers from the large fires were used to reignite the hearth fires in each home. The notion then developed that the souls of sinful persons, as well as all other evil spirits, were at large in the community during that night. To discourage these mysterious entities from acts of retribution, sacrifices were thrown into the bonfires. At first, the sacrifices were domesticated animals. Horses were popular because they were believed to be sacred to the Sun God, who needed attention because he was punishing the people by giving them fewer hours of daylight. Black cats were a favorite sacrifice because they were thought to be evil spirits transformed into animals.
The Celtic Druids by John Michell 
The question of who invaded Britain in prehistoric times, and when these incursions took place, was much debated by earlier generations of scholars. Bloody battles were imagined, in which one race virtually exterminated another and populated the country anew. Mysterious "Beaker folk" were said to have arrived in the third millennium B.C. introducing metalwork and burying their chiefs in barrow tombs along with their favorite beakers. After them came the Celts; around 600 B.C. was the accepted date for their appearance in Britain. The nature of these invasions and their supposed dates are all now disputed. Archaeological science earlier in this century was much concerwith racial types, and it was fashionable to argue that successive invaders prevailed because they were of superior stock to the natives. At the root of these theories was Darwin's theory of evolution and belief in progress. The influence of such theories has now waned, and scholars are more inclined to regard social changes as being produced by migrations of culture at least as much as by warfare. In ancient times, as today, new ideas spread quickly enough around the world without violence. Nor is there any more certainty about the date of the Celts' arrival. One can speak of Celtic culture and languages, but there is no single Celtic race; Celtic speakers vary in appearance from short and swarthy to tall and fair. Evidence of Celtic culture appears in Britain from the second millennium B.C., and it is now suggested that the Celtic priesthood could have been responsible for the Stonehenge temple, built in about 2000 B.C. Celtic society in Britain preserved many features from the previous order, including shrines and feast days. Its calendar combined lunar and solar cycles, as in megalithic times. The social structure was similar to that advocated by Plato, based on a religious cosmology and democratic idealism. Each tribe had its own territory with fixed borders, and that land, held by the tribe as a whole, consisted of forest and wilderness, common lands and agricultural holdings. Under a complicated system of land tenure, everyone's rights and obligations were carefully defined. Some of the land was worked in common for the chieftain, the priests, and the old, poor, and sick tribesfolk; the rest was apportioned as family farms. Grazing and foraging rights were shared on the common lands. Much of the tribal business was conducted at annual assemblies where land disputes were decided, petty offenders were tried, and chiefs and officials, both male and female, were appointed by popular vote. A great many old farmsteads in Britain, today, are on Celtic sites. During his raid on Celtic Britain in 55 B.C., Julius Caesar commented on its high population and numerous farms and cattle. The unifying bond between all the Celtic tribes was their common priesthood, the Druids. Their efforts preserved common culture, religion, history, laws, scholarship, and science. They had paramount authority over every tribal chief and, since their office was sacred, they could move where they wanted. settling disputes and stopping battles by compelling the rival parties to arbitration. They managed the higher legal system and the courts of appeal, and their colleges in Britain were famous throughout the Continent. Up to twenty years of oral instruction and memorizing was required of a pupil before being admitted into their order. Minstrels and bards were educated by the Druids for similar periods. Knowledge of the Druids comes directly from classical writers of their time. They were compared to the learned priesthoods of antiquity, the Indian Brahmins, the Pythagoreans, and the Chaldean astronomers of Babylon. Caesar wrote that they "know much about the stars and celestial motions, and about the size of the earth and universe, and about the essential nature of things, and about the powers and authority of' the immortal gods; and these things they teach to their pupils." They also taught the traditional doctrine of the soul's immortality. They must have professed detailed knowledge of the workings of reincarnation, for one writer said that they allowed debts incurred in one lifetime to be repaid in the next. A significant remark of Caesar's was that Druidism originated in Britain, which was its stronghold. Indeed, it has all the appearance of a native religion, being deeply rooted in the primeval native culture. Its myths and heroic legends are related to the ancient holy places of Britain, and they may largely have been adapted from much earlier traditions. In Celtic, as in all previous times, the same holy wells and nature shrines were visited on certain days for their spiritual virtues. The overall pattern of life was scarcely changed. In the course of time, society became more structured and elaborate and the Druid laws more rigid, but the beginning of the Celtic period in Britain was evidently not marked by any major break in tradition. Nor was there any great shift in population; the British today, even in the so-called Celtic lands, are predominantly of native Mesolithic ancestry. The Druids' religion and science also have the appearance of belonging to an earlier Britain. Their knowledge of astronomy may have descended from the priests of megalithic times, together with the spiritual secrets of the landscape. Yet there is an obvious difference between the Celtic Druids and the megalithic priests before them. The Druids abandoned the great stone temples and reverted to the old natural shrines, the springs and groves where they held their rituals. A religious reformation is here implied. It is characteristic of state priesthoods that their spiritual powers wane as their temporal authority grows; and the less confidence they inspire, the more tributes and sacrifices they demand of the people In its latter days the rule of the megalithic priesthood probably became so onerous that it was overthrown. Whether as a native development or prompted by outside influences, a spiritual revival seems to have occurred in Britain in about 2000 B.C. with the building of the cosmic temple of Stonehenge and the first evidences of Celtic culture. Stonehenge is a unique monument, a symbol of a new revelation. The tendency in modern scholarship is to see it once more as the temple of the Druids, If so, it proclaims the high ideals on which Druidism in Britain was founded |
