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’.