Druidism
Druidism refers to both the priestly and learned caste of pre-Roman Celtic societies in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland and to the modern revival movements that draw inspiration from them. The historical Druids were attested by Greek and Roman writers from the third century BCE to the first century CE, when Roman authorities suppressed them as politically dangerous. Modern Druidism began in eighteenth-century Britain and includes the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) founded in 1964, the British Druid Order, and Henri Hubert's research circle in France.
Origin
The historical Druids are described by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, by Posidonius (whose work survives only in quotation), by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars (around 50 BCE), by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (around 77 CE), and by Tacitus in his Annals. Caesar reports that the Druids of Gaul formed a unified order under a chief Druid, met annually in the territory of the Carnutes, taught oral lore for up to twenty years, served as judges and political advisers, and believed in the transmigration of souls. Pliny describes the Druidic harvest of mistletoe from oak trees with a golden sickle and the sacrifice of two white bulls. Roman authorities suppressed Druidism in Gaul under Augustus and Tiberius and in Britain under Claudius and Nero, with the destruction of the Druid sanctuary on Anglesey by Suetonius Paulinus in 60 or 61 CE.
After Christianisation, Druidic traditions survived in fragmentary form within Irish and Welsh learned tradition, especially in the medieval Irish Senchas Mor and the Welsh Mabinogion. The modern Druid revival began with the Ancient Order of Druids founded by Henry Hurle in London in 1781 as a fraternal society, the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards founded by Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) in 1792, and the Druid Order founded by William Price and George Watson MacGregor Reid. The contemporary movement was reshaped by Ross Nichols, who founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) in 1964. OBOD now has students in over 50 countries. The Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA, 1963) and the Henge of Keltria (1986) are major American orders.
Teachings and method
Modern Druidism organises practice in three grades drawn from ancient sources: the Bard (poet, storyteller, musician, keeper of cultural memory), the Ovate (seer, healer, diviner, naturalist), and the Druid (priest, teacher, judge, mediator). A student progresses through the three grades over several years of study. The Bard work focuses on cultural and creative expression and the recovery of Celtic mythology. The Ovate work focuses on divination (Ogham, intuitive reading, healing), tree and plant lore, and engagement with the dead and the ancestors. The Druid work focuses on philosophical, ritual, and ecological responsibility.
The Druidic ritual year traditionally follows the four Celtic fire festivals: Imbolc (1 February, the festival of Brigid), Beltane (1 May, the fires of the herding season), Lughnasadh (1 August, the harvest festival of Lugh), and Samhain (1 November, the new year and the festival of the ancestors). Most modern Druids also observe the two solstices and two equinoxes, giving the same eight-festival year as Wicca. The Ogham is the principal Druidic divinatory tool: a twenty-letter alphabet preserved on Irish Ogham stones dating from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, used in modern practice as a tree alphabet for casting and meditation.
In practice
A typical Druidic practice begins with a relationship to place. The practitioner walks the local landscape regularly, learns its trees, birds, plants, and weather, and identifies a sacred grove, often a single tree or a small clearing in a wood, for personal practice. Rituals are conducted outdoors when possible. The opening of a ritual involves the casting of a sacred space in a triple circle, the invocation of the four directions and the three realms (land, sea, sky), and the calling of the spirits of place and the ancestors. The body of the rite varies with purpose: seasonal celebration, divination, healing, or working.
The OBOD distance learning course, written principally by Philip Carr-Gomm, takes students through the three grades over several years. The British Druid Order, led by Greywolf and Bobcat, emphasises a more reconstructionist approach. The Henge of Keltria offers an American Celtic reconstructionist path. Combine Druidic practice with Runes as a parallel tree-alphabet system, with Wicca for the related Wheel of the Year, and with Neopaganism for the wider context. Use the oracle hub for divinatory tools applicable to Druidic practice.
Symbolic depth
The deepest teaching of modern Druidism is the sanctity of place and the kinship of all living beings. Where many religious traditions face away from the world toward a transcendent reality, Druidism faces into the world, finding the sacred in this oak, this river, this hill, this season. The triskele or triple spiral, found on Neolithic monuments such as Newgrange in Ireland and adopted as a modern Druidic emblem, expresses the threefold structure of Druidic cosmology: land, sea, sky; past, present, future; body, soul, spirit; Bard, Ovate, Druid.
The historical authenticity of modern Druidism, as with much Neopaganism, is partial. The ancient Druids left no written records of their own and the Roman testimonies are hostile or distant. Modern Druidism is therefore largely a creative reconstruction from Celtic mythology, Welsh and Irish medieval texts, archaeological evidence, and the imagination of figures from Iolo Morganwg in the 1790s to Ross Nichols in the 1960s. Morganwg himself forged many of the supposedly ancient Welsh sources he published, a fact known to modern Druids. The honest modern Druidic position is to acknowledge this and to work with the tradition as a contemporary religion in dialogue with ancient Celtic culture. Continue with Neopaganism, Wicca, and Runes.
Also known as
- Druidry
- Modern Druidism
- Druidic Path
- Celtic Druidism
- Druid Order