Druidism

“ In Druidism, for one example, disciples for training in magical sciences are said to have spent twenty years in severe study and special psychical training before deemed fit to be called Druids and thus to control daemons, ghosts, or all invisible entities capable of possessing living men and women. ”

“ Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the Oriental dreams of metempsychosis—that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. ”

“ The older cult of the divinity that was par excellence the god of druidism, with its direst horrors, would probably have left in the hands of the druids despotic power, which the spread of the worship of the Culture hero or Man-god may be supposed to have indirectly tended to lessen. ”

“ On this view the Christian Church in its dealings with the black art merely carried out the traditional policy of Druidism, and it might be a nice question to decide which of the two, in pursuance of that policy, exterminated the larger number of innocent men and women.111 Be that as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be the fertility of the land.112 To a modern reader the connexion at first sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the productivity of the earth. ”

“ No doubt Druidism is a most interesting and a most important subject for due and calm investigation, and the facts handed down to us in regard to it by Cæsar, Diodorus, Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and other classic and hagiological authors, are full of the gravest archæological bearings; but no doubt also many antiquarian relics, both large and small, have been provokingly called Druidical, merely because their origin and object were unknown. We have not, for instance, a particle of direct evidence for the too common belief that our stone circles were temples [Pg 38] which the Druids used for worship ”

“ For, in the Breton mind, the superstitions of Druidism have not been wholly uprooted by the teachings of Christianity, still less by those of science and reason. Many a dark and dismal legend flourishes in the lonely recesses of the landes. ”

“ On this view Pliny was substantially right (Nat. Hist. xvi. 249) in connecting Druid with the Greek drus, “oak,” though the name was not derived from the Greek. However, this derivation of Druid has been doubted or rejected by some scholars. See H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, Cours de la littérature celtique, i. (Paris, 1883) , pp. 117 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 638 sq.
1191. See above, p. 242.
1192. The Gael’s “faith in druidism was never suddenly undermined ”

“ As Druidism is so commonly believed to have prevailed among the Picts as well as among the other inhabitants of Britain, we shall here give a very brief account of that system, chiefly as we find it given in Cæsar. [90] The following is the account given by Cæsar of the character and functions of the Druids:—“They attend to divine worship, perform public and private sacrifices, and expound matters of religion. A great number of youths are gathered round them for the sake of education, and they enjoy the highest honour in that nation ”

“ They all raise their eyes towards heaven, observe the clouds, and hurl spells against the elements, so that they arouse strife amongst them and clouds of fire are driven towards the camp of the men of Ireland.” We are further told that at the court of Conchobar no one had the right to speak before the Druids had spoken. In other texts the Druids are able to produce insanity. ”

“ The lads of one farm, when their own fire was burned down and the ashes scattered, sometimes went to a neighbouring fire and helped to kick the ashes about.595 Referring to this part of Scotland, a writer at the end of the eighteenth century observes that “the Hallow-even fire, another relict of druidism, was kindled in Buchan. Various magic ceremonies were then celebrated to counteract the influence of witches and demons, and to prognosticate to the young their success or disappointment in the matrimonial lottery. ”

“ As higher and higher it climbed the sky, one by one there leapt from the earth beneath each stone an aged Druid all clothed in white, with long waving grey locks and beard, and crowned with garlands of oak leaves, holly, laurels, and mistletoe. When the circle of Druids was quite complete the old rascal who had lured me from my shop, and who now appeared to be their chief, stepped towards me, now far too bewildered and astounded to resist, and solemnly placed upon my brow a wreath of wild violets. ”

“ The Druids taught the people of Britain and Gaul concerning the immortality of the soul. They believed in transmigration and apparently in reincarnation. They borrowed in one life, promising to pay back in the next. They believed in a purgatorial type of hell where they would be purged of their sins, afterward passing on to the happiness of unity with the gods. The Druids taught that all men would be saved, but that some must return to earth many times to learn the lessons of human life and to overcome the inherent evil of their own natures. ”

“ And thus spoke the Druidess:—
“Men of Britain’s Holy Isle, Spiritless and idle still Rest ye here, and all the while Forest demons work their will? Barren lie your hungry fields, Yielding nought for human food, While your spirit tamely yields To the Tyrant of the Wood. Hear the Future! To the gods While libations Druids pour, Britain’s Oak to ruin nods, Rotten to the very core! Craven spirits fear and hide From the devastating foe. Can the gods be satisfied With a race of cowards? No! What the mighty gods inspire Bertha to her race imparts. ”

“ Many of the Irish believed in the religion of the Druids—a strange faith that brought in the magic arts and endeavored to teach above all other things that a man's soul when he dies enters another human body. This belief was widely established throughout the world, and it is true that many persons beside the Druids believed in it; but the Druids had other beliefs that were cruel and dangerous. They were said to perform human sacrifices and their priests to practise black magic. ”

“ White bulls are dragged to the tree, and their broad foreheads are bound to its stem, their loud bellowings mingling with the strain of the wild anthem which the worshippers raise. When the beasts have been slaughtered as sacrifices, the chief Druid, clad in his flowing white robes, his golden collar and bracelets, ascends the oak, treading on the backs and broad shoulders of blindfolded slaves. With a golden pruning-knife he severs the mistletoe, and beneath him attendant Druids receive it on a white linen cloth. ”

“ The block idol of the poor Laplander has its sacred limit within which the devotee only ventures on bended knees and with face to the earth; the oak-crowned Druid taught the mysteries of his stern religion in temples of unhewn stones, open to the sun, in rude but gigantic structures, which in their form symbolized the God of his adoration; conquerors humbled themselves as they approached the precincts which the voice of the Pythoness had consecrated; no worshipper trod the avenues guarded by the silent, emblematic Sphynx, except with awe and reverence ”

“ The mistletoe is a parasitic plant, and is not always nor often found on the oak, so that when it is found it is the more precious.
The Druids were the teachers of morality as well as of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable specimen is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, and from this we may gather that their views of moral rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles of conduct. They were also the men of science and learning of their age and people. ”

“ Did not the druids leave the people for over ten centuries steeped in crassest ignorance, governing them with the instruments of barbarism—superstition and terror? Did not those days of oppression and debasement last until the glorious and prosperous epoch when, merged in the body of the nation as citizens, fathers and soldiers, our druids took part in the common life of the people, in the joys of the family, and in the national wars against the foreigner? ”

“ Deep in their forest shades they offer their mysterious sacrifices; sometimes human beings, imprisoned in huge wicker-work images, are burnt to death to appease the angry gods. The Druids claim to hold sway even over the spirits of the departed, and the Briton trembles as he hears the voices of tormented souls wailing in the night wind. Every shadow is a terror; every flying cloud is an omen of good or ill; every spring, river, and fountain has its guardian deity. Fire is the element which the Druids hold in the highest reverence ”

“ The Druids were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who derived the appellation erroneously from drus, an oak, under the supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also [Pg 58] called the Druids Saronides, from two Celtic words sar and dhuine, signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. ”

“ But, when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. ”

“ In the eyes of the barbarian Britons, alike ignorant, credulous, and superstitious, the place would appear to be the very sanctuary of Omnipotence, and the Druid ministers themselves an impersonation of their gods. Wind and cloud, storm and tempest, wrought powerfully in the abstruse mysteries and terrific incantations constituting the Druidical worship; and the mind was prostrated, with terrific awe, at the shrine where natural sublimity combined with human cunning to thrill its scarcely awakened faculties. ”

“ Like the Brahmans, who, so long as their authority is acknowledged, recognize, but regulate, the Protean manifestations of Hindu religious fancy,1267 the Druids kept control over the manifold forms of aboriginal and Celtic worship. Being a sacerdotal caste, not, like the priests of Rome, popularly elected, but self-constituted and self-contained, they were naturally opposed to all innovation. It has been said that ancient writers regarded as peculiar to the Druids beliefs and practices which were common to them and other priests of antiquity. ”

“ For to read of the priests connected with the holy forest of Romove in ancient Prussia unavoidably leads one to this comparison, and reminds one in a striking manner of what is told us in the classics about the druids of Gaul, and in a later literature about those of Ireland. Seeing the importance of sacred trees in the ancient cult of the chief god of the Aryans of Europe, and the preference evinced for the oak as the tree fittest to be his emblem or even the residence of his divinity, I am inclined to regard the old etymology of the word druid as being, roughly speaking, the comet one. ”

“ In process of time, however, the gods of the Gaulish Druids penetrated into the sacred mythology of the British and furnished personifications for the different attributes of the dracontic god Hu. This deity was called “The Dragon Ruler of the World” and his car was drawn by serpents. His priests in accommodation with the general custom of the Ophite god, were called after him “Adders.” [18]
In a poem of Taliessin, translated by Davies, in his Appendix, No. 6, is the following enumeration of a Druid’s titles:—
“I am a Druid; I am an architect; I am a prophet; I am a serpent” (Gnadr) . ”

“ The Druids, therefore, who resided in the neighbourhood, made a pilgrimage to one of their largest temples, situated among the mountains, in the midst of a vast forest. The Arch-Druid, having gathered the mistletoe, just as the rising sun licked the dew from its berries, and performed a number of other rites, to obtain answer from the Great Spirit, informed them that Heaven would not be appeased unless a young virgin was immolated as a sacrifice for the sins of the inhabitants. ”

“ These Druids have left their traces in some parts of England and France in rows of huge stones set upright; and wherever an immense stone was found lying on two others, in the shape of a table, there had been a Druid altar, where the priest offered sacrifices, often of human beings. So horrible may be a so-called religion that men themselves devise, and that has not come from the true God. ”

“ Gone are the Druids, but their name still survives in the mountains and valleys of Wales, where the ancient Britons found their refuge in a later age. Our modern Druids love letters and music, and the other beautiful arts which touch and kindle souls. Theirs it is to encourage men and women to build the lofty rhyme, to weave the golden strands of melody, and to limn the loveliness of earth and sea and sky. Thus transformed, the Druid is a prophet of sweetness and light, not an enslaver of souls.
THE COMING OF CÆSAR.
“The foremost man of all the world.” ”

“ I have always thought that there was a more spiritual quality in the religion of the Druids than in that of most ancient heathen faiths, due probably to the fact that their rites and ceremonies were performed in the woods and forests, and that in their seeking after a Force beyond that which they saw, they received some measure of the revelation which comes to every one who loves the woods and fields. To us who have the light of other revelation, the contact with Nature brings a closer touch and keener sympathy with the great scheme of the Author of all creation. ”