Modern Druidism

The History of Modern Druidism

https://druidry.org/druid-way/what-druidry/recent-history

Any study of the druids must begin with a process of demystification…

Jean Markale, The Druids – Celtic Priests of Nature

Druidism is rooted in the culture and mythology of Western Europe – in particular in those cultures which have come to be known as Celtic, which stretch from Ireland and parts of Portugal in the West to France, Switzerland and Austria in the East. We first hear of it in the writings of Julius Caesar, who in about 50 BCE wrote that Druidism originated in Britain. But some say that it originated elsewhere and much earlier, in Egypt or India, while mystics such as Dion Fortune and Rudolf Steiner point, with what they believe to be clairvoyant rather than historical evidence, to the even more mysterious land of Atlantis. Whether Druidry’s roots are indeed so exotic, or whether the historical understanding that Druidism evolved in the British Isles about 2,500 years ago is correct, the current revival of interest in Druidism depends not so much upon the ancient past as upon very recent history.

Modern Druidism, as it is practised by most Druids today, emerged out of two acts of rebellion during that fertile and tumultuous period of the 1960s. Virtually simultaneously, on both sides of the Atlantic, revolutions occurred in how Druidry was understood: in 1963 on the Carleton College campus in the USA a group called The Reformed Druids of North America was created as a humorous protest against mandatory Sunday morning chapel attendance, while the following year in England a historian, Ross Nichols, rebelled against the election of a new Druid Chief, and established his own group, The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids.

Although both the RDNA and the OBOD were initially small groups, they exerted an influence over the coming years which resulted in Druidism finally emerging in the last decade of the twentieth century as a viable alternative to the more well-known and established spiritual paths.

Prior to the mid-1960s almost all Druid activity over the previous few hundred years had been confined to the cultural efforts of the Welsh Druids and the fraternal activities of the English Druids – neither of which treated Druidry as a spiritual path in its own right. An exception could be found, however, in one type of Druidism that did focus on spiritual practice – even though it attracted only a handful of followers. At the dawn of the twentieth century a dynamic and vocal individual, George Watson MacGregor Reid, began promoting Druidism as a spiritual path that could unite followers of many faiths, and the group that he led, The Universal Bond, became a vehicle for conveying many of the ideas that had been expressed by groups such as The Theosophical Society and The Order of the Golden Dawn in the previous century. Through the Universal Bond a complex tapestry began to be woven, which drew on the inspiration of the ancient Druids, the work of the Revival Druids of the previous three centuries, the teachings of the world religions, and the Western Mystery Tradition. The group held ceremonies at Stonehenge, campaigned for social justice, and promoted the Universalist Church, which later became incorporated into the Unitarian Church.

In the 1940’s and 50’s the Universal Bond, which had gradually evolved into being called the Ancient Druid Order, attracted to it two figures who would act as catalysts for the explosion of interest in Paganism that is occurring today: Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols. Gardner became the seminal figure in the promotion of the religion of Wicca, or pagan witchcraft, while Nichols developed Druidism by focusing its concerns on Celtic lore and mythology. Both Nichols and many Wiccans were inspired by a book which has influenced much of the modern Pagan movement – Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, which claimed to have discovered a Druidic tree alphabet and calendar. Both Nichols and Gardner came to adopt an eightfold cycle of observances which now lies at the heart of both Druid and Wiccan practice.

Gardner died in 1964 and so did the chief of the Ancient Druid Order- MacGregor Reid’s son Robert. A new chief was elected, but Nichols decided he wanted to work with Druidism in a different way, and formed his own order, which has since grown to become the largest Druid group in the world. While his group was formed out of a serious desire to deepen Druidism as a spiritual practice, the Reformed Druids of North America were founded a year earlier partly as a prank to avoid church services, and partly as a protest against compulsory attendance. The initiative proved creative: since students who claimed they were Druids were obliged to hold alternative rites, they found themselves becoming seriously interested in new ways of worship – and Druidism. The writings and activities of the RDNA inspired the creation of the largest Druid group in America today, the ADF, out of which other groups have emerged to develop and enrich contemporary Druidism.

By 1969 Druids were starting to feature in the burgeoning counter-culture. John Lennon consciously or intuitively knew that Peace and Love, the cornerstones of counter-cultural idealism, were deeply connected with Druidism, and so he sang about this in his ‘Mind-Games’.

Why do we know so little about the Druids?

The powerful Celtic social class posed a threat to the Roman Empire before being subsumed by Christianity, but their origins remain shrouded in the past.

ByErin Blakemore

November 15, 2019 Were Druids peaceful priests or dangerous prophets? Did they worship nature or foment rebellion? Not much is known about the ancient social class of people known as Druids, but that has never kept people from speculating on their real nature. The earliest detailed accounts of the Druids date back to the first century B.C., but it’s likely that they had established their special role within the ancient communities of what is now Britain, Ireland, and France long before then. The word comes from a Latin transcription of the Celtic word for a social class of people among the ancient Celts who concerned themselves with prophecy and ritual.

Since Ancient Celts didn’t use the written word, all of our accounts about the Druids come from outsiders, particularly the Romans. Druids “are engaged in things sacred, conduct the public and the private sacrifices, and interpret all matters of religion,” wrote Julius Caesar in the 50s B.C., after Rome invaded Gaul (modern France). The emperor noted their interest in astronomy, education, and valor, and their habit of sacrificing fellow Gauls to gain their gods’ favor by using wicker men stuffed with live men and set on fire.

Other Roman writers also fixated on the Druids’ love of blood and gore. Pliny the Elder wrote of the Druids’ appreciation for both mistletoe and human sacrifice. “To murder a man was to do the act of highest devoutness,” he wrote, “and to eat his flesh was to secure the highest blessings of health.” Tacitus even described a battle in Wales in which Druids “[covered] their altars with the blood of captives and [consulted] their deities through human entrails.”

The pagan practitioners presented an existential threat to the Romans, who feared Druid power over the Celtic communities that Rome had conquered. Classicist Jane Webster suggests the Druids’ apocalyptic visions and rites were seen as acts of resistance to Roman conquerors, who suppressed Druids and their rituals beginning with the reign of Augustus in 27 B.C.

Christianity began to make inroads into France and the British Isles in the first century A.D., and as the centuries progressed it papered over many Celtic traditions. But Druids continued to pop up in medieval literature, suggesting that the pagan priests later became healers and magicians. Yet, since we have no written accounts from the pre-Christian Celts, it’s virtually impossible to verify any historical claims about the Druids. Nonetheless, Druids have gone through several revivals over the millennia, including a Romantic-era resurgence and a 21st-century incarnation as Modern Druidism.

Though historians had come to dismiss Roman claims of the Druids’ supposedly brutal religious tradition as overblown, the controversy about their potentially gruesome rituals was raised again—literally—in 1984. That year, a peat cutter found human remains in Cheshire, England. This was no ordinary find: Lindow Man, as he became known, had been preserved in the bog for nearly 2,000 years, and had apparently become a bog body after suffering head blows and being stabbed and strangled before being left for dead in the bog. His stomach contained mistletoe pollen, which led to the contentious speculation that he was ritually sacrificed, perhaps by Druids, or that he was himself a Druid prince. (Watch archaeologists piece together the story of Lindow Man.)

It’s tempting to speculate about the true nature of the Druids, but since most of what is known about this ancient social class comes from secondary sources, it is impossible to verify most claims. Even the term seems to have been a blanket designation for scholars, philosophers, teachers, and holy men concerned with nature, justice and magic. And archaeology doesn’t have great answers, either. “Among archaeologists there is currently no consensus over how material evidence relates to the Druids even within the same country,” writes History Today’s Ronald Hutton. “Not a single artifact has been turned up anywhere which experts universally and unequivocally agree to be Druidic.” Then and now, the idea of Druids evokes both magic and mystery.