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Druids

Keltic Culture. The Celts or Kelts, who represent a culture rather than, or as well as, a race, originated, like other Indo-European peoples in the region of the Caucasus. Plutarch gives authorities for the belief that the Kelts come from the Crimea. Some spread into the Balkan Peninsula, others reached the Alps and eventually descended on Rome, where, however, they were repulsed, the rem­nants migrating to the middle of Asia Minor where they formed the country known as Galatia. Others reached Denmark and Ger­many, from which the Teutons displaced them. More successful were those that entered what is now France and the Low Countries, and in the former they settled especially between the Seine and the Garonne rivers, the country being known to the Romans as Gaul. Others entered what is now northern Spain and Portugal. From Spain, Portugal, France and Low Countries they passed to Great Britain and Ireland.

The Keltic languages have survived in Britain and Brittany in France. They include Erse or Irish Gaelic spoken in Ireland, Scots Gaelic in Scotland, Manx in the Isle of Man, Welsh in Wales, Cornish (practically extinct) in Cornwall and Breton in Brittany. Keltic culture is best preserved in Ireland and Wales where it has been relatively little interfered with by invaders, but even here the modifications have been very great.

The Kelts had a complex social organization, which reached its maximum development in Ireland in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. C. S. Coon has described this on the basis of recent anthropological investigations. There was a feudal system, with the High King of All Ireland at its head, under him five Kings of each of the great provinces Ulster, Munster, Connaught, Leinster and Meath, under them Kings of the Counties, under them Kings of the Hills and Peaks, under them four classes of Nobles, under them Cattle-chiefs, under them Freemen and Craftsmen, and finally Bondsmen. The land was divided up accordingly, except that the last class held no land. Besides these landowners and bondsmen was the learned class, called Druids. These had an independent hier­archy, regulating everything else, including the appointment of the High King and all kings, nobles and chiefs, and acting as priests, judges, physicians, educators, poets, astrologers and magicians. They were said to write in Greek characters. They are also said to have used the ancient Ogham alphabet, wherein the letters consisted of vertical and oblique strokes, variously combined and placed along a horizontal line. Classical authors, however, agreed that druidic lore was not committed to writing but was learned by rote. Consequently the training of a druid took a long time, some say twenty years. Women were also enrolled among the druid fraternity, since classical writers refer to Druidesses. There were several grades of initiation, as in other priesthoods. Two of the grades included Bards and Ovates (Vates). Whether these were pre­liminaries to the grade of Druid we do not know, but it is certain that poetry was highly cultivated as a religious exercise. Druidesses may have been used as mediums for communicating with the other world, as pythonesses were among the Greeks.

Druidism also flourished in Great Britain and Gaul, before the conversion of these countries to Christianity. Julius Caesar who was in personal contact with the Druids (for he invaded England as is well known in (55 B.C.), says that the Druids from Gaul went to Britain for their training. There are also references to a training college for Druids in Anglesey, which seems to have been the seat of their chief. When the country was converted many of the Druids became Priests and the Arch-druids Bishops.

Archaeological remains show that the inhabitants of Britain before the Saxon conquest were by no means all naked savages, painted with woad, as Caesar described them. They had passed through the Bronze into the Iron Age, had beautiful pottery, textiles, implements and armor. The clothing of the people showed their rank, the number of colors worn being indicative of their status. The Druids used implements of bronze and gold, and their golden breastplates and torques can be seen in our museums. They carried crosiers, but most of these are of schist.

The whole subject of Druidism has been under a cloud for more than half a century among archaeologists. This is due to the romantic writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, who persistently associated the Druids with the Cyclopean monuments, such as Stonehenge, and regarded the latter as being built under Druidic supervision. This view has now been abandoned. W. Stukeley (1687— 1765), who was an early investigator of Stonehenge and Avebury, and W. Blake (1757—1827) artist and poet, were exponents of the view that Britain was the home of the Patriarchal Religion, and believed that religion was Druidism.

The modern view is that Druidism was a tree cult, based on two facts: that Europe, including Great Britain and Ireland were up to the time of the beginning of the Christian era covered with extensive forests in which the dominant tree was oak; that the acorn, the fruit of the oak, was the staple food of the inhabitants of this vast area. The classical peoples also had this cult originally, for Jupiter, the king of their gods, was an oak-god. But in Greece and Rome it was superseded by a corn and wine cult (personified in Ceres and Bacchus) and became sophisticated in more ways than one.

Druidic Ritual. The most peculiar feature of druidic worship is the veneration of the mistletoe, which is a semi-parasitic plant growing on trees, its seeds planted there by birds. It is not common on the oak, but in the druidic ceremony it had to be found thereon and cut off with a golden sickle. The cut branches of mistletoe were then distributed to the congregation. In 1944 the present writer put forward a theory of this ceremony, comparing it with the Christian Eucharist. It was based on a remark of Elder who pointed out that the Messiah was called a branch. The oak represents the ancestral tree of the Messiah, known as the Tree of Jesse, and portrayed as a real tree in many mediaeval manuscripts. On this a bird plants the mistletoe. The latter is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, who plants the Messiah on the ancestral tree of Jesse. And only gold may touch the sacred plant, as the wine of the vine sacra­ment, after the consecration becoming Christ, is only allowed to come into contact with the gold inside surface of the chalice. It is also pointed out that several plants have a sacramental significance. We may add that the mistletoe was held sacred also by the Teutons, and was said to have been, in some legends, the plant that formed the cross, and originally of tree-like dimensions. Virgil indicates that the mistletoe was the golden bough, around which in modern times Sir James Frazer wrote so extensively concerning the vegeta­tion cult.

The Druids are also recorded as making giant wickerwork figures, placing animals or human beings therein, and burning them as a sacrifice. There is no doubt that such giant figures were constructed, craned in procession, and finally immolated. The practice was con­tinued for many centuries in England, and the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes on November ₅th is a relic of this practice. Whether human victims were ever included is disputed. Elder repudiates the idea, Canney thinks it was exceptional, and refers to instances where a few drops of blood were drawn from the victim, and then only the dummy was burnt.

Great druidic festivals took place four times during the year. Bonfires were lit on these occasions. Beltane was celebrated at the beginning of May, it has been perpetuated in maypole ceremonies, the beginning of morris dancing, the election of May kings and queens, the great witches’ festival, coinciding with St. Walburga’s day (May 1st) in the Church, and the various junketing of the Labor and Communist parties on the same date. Lugnasad was celebrated early in August. In the Middle Ages it was Lammas or Gule of August, now largely transformed into August Bank Holiday. Samhain occurs at the beginning of November. In the Catholic Church it was replaced by All Saints (November 1st) and All Souls (November 2nd) and among Protestants by Guy Fawkes day (November ₅th). Oimelc, known in Ireland as Earrach was cele­brated at the beginning of February; it corresponds with St. Bridgit (February 1st) who had a fire shrine (her name is the same as one of the Keltic goddesses), and with the Purification or Candlemas (Feb­ruary 2nd) the day on which the blessing of candles occurs. There was also a festival three days after the summer solstice, and on that day, known in Christian times as the Nativity of St. John the Baptist there was celebrated a fire-wheel ceremony, when a blazing cart wheel was made to run down a hill, a custom that has survived until recent times. There was also a festival three days after the Winter Solstice, corresponding with our Christmas. S. C. Cox says that the seasons were personified by the Druids, Spring by a youth, Summer by a middle-aged man, Autumn by an elderly and Winter by an old man, the last named having developed into St. Nicholas who is Santa Claus or Father Christmas.

One of the most peculiar practices of the Druids relates to the serpent’s egg. This was one of their ritual objects, and is described, from personal observation in Pliny’s Natural History. It is of the size of a small apple, with cartilaginous shell and pitted surface. It is, says Pliny, formed in summer when a number of snakes twine together, as a secretion from their bodies, mixed with saliva. When the snakes hiss, some of this substance is thrown in the air. It must be, he continues, caught on a cloth before reaching the ground, and carried away on horseback, as the serpents would pursue, until one has crossed a stream. This must be done on a certain day of the moon. The so-called egg has the property of floating against the current of a river. We have connected this egg, which certain bards say was competed for by two parties, the successful one carrying it across water, with various forms of funereal games, with the mediaeval ceremony of pelota, and the whipping of the spinning top representing Alleluia on the Saturday before Septuagesima.’ But it is highly probable that many ball games had a religious signi­ficance originally, and this is one of them. The egg or ball may have represented the soul (or more exactly the causal body of theosophy) and the game represents the contest for this between the powers of good and evil.

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