Druidism is considered a pagan religion, whose followers put their faith in many different gods and goddesses. Druids also strongly believe in reincarnation. Druidism is still practiced today, although beliefs and practices may vary from that of their ancestors.The ancient tradition of Druidry continues today and is experiencing a flourishing resurgence around the world. An Earth based faith, Druidry melds the love of sea, sky, and land with ritual, story telling, poetry, music, and the visual arts.
Druids are spiritual counselors and philosophers who offer guidance about the enigmas, conundrums, and problems of daily life. The spiritual lineage of Druidry spans thousands of years.
Druidism was the ancient magical religious faith found to be operating in Gaul and later England and Ireland as the Romans pushed northward that has been revived as a twentieth-century Neo-Pagan religion. The name derives from an old Welsh term for oak, implying that they are the people who know the wisdom of the trees. Druidism was the religion of the Celtic people that was administered by priests and priestesses called Druids. There is little first hand knowledge or the Druids or of their religion. The chief reason for this is that they taught their acolytes secret Druidical knowledge by word of mouth. None of this trusted knowledge was committed to writing; it was all learned through mnemonics.
The most important knowledge that exists of the Druids comes from the writings of Julius Caesar. Caesar was not only a warrior and statesman but a priest as well; therefore he was keenly interested in the Druidism and the Celtic people. Moreover, he was friendly with a pro-Roman Druid, Diviciacus, who shared with him many Druid beliefs, especially about their gods and life after death.
Caesar mentions some of these beliefs and the behavior of the people in his "Gallic Wars."
Julius Caesar encountered the Druids in Gaul in the first century B.C.E. where, among other duties, they oversaw the human sacrifices that were then part of the Celtic religion. The Druids were concerned with the divine worship; they officiated over both public and private sacrifices, interpreted ritual questions, settled disputes and issued punishments to those refusing to obey their rulings.
Caesar asserted several times "that Druid power originated in Britain and that Britain remained the center of Druidism." This judgment of the Druids was profound and also served to unite the Celtic people. Druidic decisions were critical and were to be completely adhered to. Caesar noted those not obeying the decisions were banished from the tribe and even a wider community. In Gaul there were always boundary disputes that required Druidic intervention. The suggestion that the Druids settled boundary disputes indicates the importance of Druidic rule among the Celtic tribes.
More evidence that the Druids and the religion of Druidism held the Celts together were the tribal assemblies which occurred on days that were vital in the agricultural year.
From that time forward, a number of Romans chronicled their life, especially after the conquest of Britain in the next century. Gradually, Christianity was introduced into England and then in the fifth century into Ireland. Over the next few centuries, it replaced the Druid religion. Like trees and water the Druids held some islands to be sacred too. One is the island of Mona, (also called Mon or Anglesey); the Romans destroyed the sanctuary there in 60 AD. It is thought that both Irish and British Druids periodically assembled in sacred strongholds.
The ancient Druid tradition, largely passed through the oral tradition, was rendered into written form in the Middle Ages in two primary texts, the Mabinogion and the Book of Taliesin. Various elements of Druidism passed into folklore and survived in local customs and folk songs. Numerous archeological remains have been discovered and through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, efforts to reconstruct the history and belief of the Druids have proceeded. It is now generally believed that the Druids were firmly in place by the sixth century B.C.E., and evidence has emerged that suggests that Druidism may be traced to the time of the monolithic culture that built Stonehenge and related structures across the British Isles. Druidism may have survived in remote corners of rural Britain, and some have suggested that it could be found on the island of St. Kilda as late as the eighteenth century.
The fragments of literature on ancient Druidism leave considerable room for interpretation of Druid belief and practice (thus providing the base for the broad spectrum of belief and behavior among contemporary Druids). It is known that the community was organized around the three groups of functionaries. The bards were the keepers of the wisdom tradition. They memorized the key material of the tradition, much of which was put into poetic form and made it available to the people. The Ovates were the mediums/shamans of the community. Among their duties was the establishment of contact with ancestors in the spirit realm. They also engaged in divination of various kinds, including the reading of entrails, in attempts to predict the future. The Druid priests were the most powerful leaders in the community. They presided over worship and group ceremonies, and often served as advisors to the secular rulers.
The Druid religion was nature-based and its worship cycle was marked by the movements of the Sun and Moon. The year was marked by the changing positions of the rising sun, the solstices and equinoxes, and the four additional festivals halfway between these four that marked important points in the agricultural seasons. These were known by different names in different locations and at different times.There were the Bards who were singers and story tellers; the Ovates who were time travellers and healers; and the Druids who were teachers, philosophers, and judges. Their spiritual teachings were encoded in their stories, songs, and myths.
Rooted deep in times long past, Druidry is a pathway that is alive with the sacredness of nature. Druidry embraces the wheel of cyclical existences, the circling, and the spiraling.
Realizing the divinity within everything, Druids sought answers to the eternal questions revolving around the unfoldment of the flower that is the individual soul, as it endures through an eternity of lives, from dawn to dusk and from season to season.
The Druidry of Celts centered around maintaining their spiritual balance and sacred connectivity with the natural world by treating all things hallowed with the respect and reverence they deserved. The living waters of rivers, springs, and wells were venerated because they were believed to have both magickal and curative powers.
Fairy Mounds, the Wee Folk, Mineral Spirits, Hollow Hills, Leprechauns, Mound Building, Animal Spirits, Holy Wells, Sacred Lakes, Tree Spirits, the Sidhe. . . the Druidic Celtic world was alive with the vibrancy and the glittering glories of hosts of Fairies; of the elemental beings of fire, earth, air, and water; of the holy divinity of the land, the sea, and the sky.
HOW DID ONE BECOME A DRUID?
Druidic education involved 20 years rote memorization. It was noted by all of the ancient
writers who visited Gaul (Poseidonius, Julius Caesar, Tacitus and Germanicus) noted how
extensive was the Druids knowledge of mathematics, physics and astronomy.
The Druids were especially associated with oaks and the mistletoe that grows as a parasite on it. According to Pliny, they gathered the mistletoe in a ritualized manner, used it in their rites, and drank its juice for its medicinal value.
Among the most controversial practices associated with Druids was human sacrifice. In their priestly service among the Celtics in Gaul, it was noted by Julius Caesar and Strabo that they oversaw the sacrifice of humans. Caesar mentioned the immense images which they filled with living victims and burned to death, a practice that was vividly pictured in the 1975 movie The Wicker Man.
WHAT DID THE ANCIENT DRUIDS BELIEVE?
The poetic tradition in Druidism comes from the method the Celts used to trace their lineage and history. Written records were distrusted for the most part, and though a runic writing system called Ogham did exist, it wasn't used for much beyond burial markers and landmarks. To write things down is to weaken the power of edidic memory, whic the Druids cultivated carefully, and to dishonour the thing written down. Druids in training had to learn all the Bardic poetry, in a manner we would call sensory deprivation. Poetic inspiration was an important spiritual practice, which the Welsh have focused on in their eisteddfod. In Irish myth there was a deity of poetry (Brigid).
The Druids taught reincarnation, and the omnipresence of a spiritual Otherworld, that is sometimes accessible to us, and particularly close at certain times of the year, like at Samhain. Oak was the most important symbol in druidic lore, as it is strong, tall, and very long-lived. Mistletoe was said to have healing qualities. Other important trees were the Yew, for its offspring grew from the dead stump of its parent, representing perpetually-regenerating life. The Ogham alphabet was a list of tree-names. Trees are important because they are bridges between the realms of Land and Sky, they communicate Water between these realms. When the Realms of Land, Sea and Sky meet, as within a tree or at a seashore for example, great power could manifest, and such places were best for poetic composition or spellcasting. Stones could channel, store, and direct earth-energy, and thus were used for markers, set in circles, and libations were poured over them in sacrifice.
Fire-worship is strong as well, but doesn't fit the Greek four-element picture. Fire is a thing unto itself, with the dual qualties of destructiveness and cleansing power. It is a spiritual principle, because it is always reaching up to the sky. This may be why they built those hilltop fires. Poetic inspiration is said to be a fire in the head, so Brigid is a fire-deity as well.
Druidic philosophy points to knowledge as the key to self awareness, else certain mythological holy-places of greatest import would not be associated with wisdom, ex. the Well of Wisdom (auspiciously located at the center of the world), the Spiral of Annwyn, the Cauldron of Cerridwen, and the 4 Wise Men of the 4 Cities in the North. Mythic places are inaccessible but also not inaccessible, for it requires a leap of faith to find them; the Well of Wisdom is at the bottom of the ocean, but to Sea Gods like Manannan, the ocean is as the sky.
The Druidic pursuit of knowledge would seem to suggest that ethical action is action that brings you closer to Wisdom. I would not seek to define wisdom at this point in the manner that the Celts may have known it, yet here the correlation between druidic wisdom and Eastern mysticism is striking; one considers the bhuddist Eightfold Path as a perscription of right actions designed to bring one closer to Nirvana. Wisdom becomes a kind of knowledge above ordinary knowledge (like facts), a form of total-awareness, or even a state of mind. Archeological evidence of "beehive" huts, secluded mountian shelters, etc. suggest the Druids used them to achieve higher states of consiousness in pursuit of this mythic wisdom. The symbol for Awen, /|\ , used since the seventeenth century, consists of three pillars with the outer two leaning into the center one. It represents the three worlds; mind, body, and spirit; sea, land, and sky.
To be gifted with Awen is to know, love, and preserve truth with appreciative nurturing commitment. The Bards were guardians of the sacredness of the Word, keepers of the ritual memories, and poetic warders of the tribe, the bards were inspired by the spirit of Awen.; the triskele (which looks something like a spiral with three arms) also demonstrates the number three as spiritually signifigant, and may stand for any triad though usually understood to stand for the realms of Earth, Sea, and Sky.
They were musical dream weavers, creativity seers, sacred storytellers, and divinity diviners. Bards were voice spinners, singing word magic into being. Their melodies enchanted with the wonder of life.
The songs of the bards renewed the land as they walked the Earth journeying to sacred sites where the ancient spirit of holiness lingered still. When the bards produced artistic works in healing lyrical lines and patterns of balanced love, light, and power, harmonic resonance was restored to the planet time and time again.
The Divine Forest, typified by the Sacred Grove or Nemeton was hallowed ground for the Druids and Celts who worshipped their Goddesses and Gods in natural spaces.
Sacred Groves were the settings for ceremonies, meetings, and sanctuaries. For instance the Galatian Celts met at the Oak Sanctuary once a year to discuss crucial tribal concerns.
Woods were so sacred to the Celts and played such a significant role in their overall cultural existence that at one time the Celtic heartlands in Northern Europe and Southern Germany were almost entirely covered with trees.
Druids often acted as Shamans and Shamanism was practiced by the ancient Celts. Some of the most superbly crafted and enchantingly enduring of the Druidic Celtic tales were similar to those about Taliesin and Fionn mac Cumhail.
The storytelling was richly textured with symbolism about alternate realities, animal totems, divination, drumming, ecstatic dance, journeying, healing, oracles, shamanic trance, shapeshifting, soul loss retrieval, spirit guides, transformation, and vision quests.
Working within the context of the Celtic Cosmology, the Druids used their power to access the Otherworld and their knowledge of what they had personally seen to help and benefit others.
There was also a Celtic Druid Zodiac based on Druidic Treelore. The thirteen signs of the Druidic Zodiac unlike the twelve signs of the Graeco-Roman Zodiac were based on trees rather than constellations.
The thirteen trees of the Druidic Zodiac are Birch, Rowan, Ash, Alder, Willow, Hawthorn, Oak, Holly, Hazel, Vine, Ivy, Reed, and Elder.
For example, the timeframe from December 24 - January 20, which in the Graeco-Roman Zodiac corresponded most nearly to the constellation of Capricorn, was called Beth, The Celtic Zodiac Sign of The Birch Tree.
Often called the "Lady of the Woods", the Birch was stronger and sturdier than the Oak Tree despite its slender beauty. While the wood of the tree produced many useful products like broom handles, the bark of the Birch was once used for writing. As a Druidic herbal remedy every part of the tree had valuable uses throughout the Celtic Calendar year.
The Natural World study of the spiraling, cyclical existences of different trees species provided valuable comparative information for understanding the journey and passages of the individual soul, as it endured through an eternity of lives, from dawn to dusk and from season to season.
Treelore was rooted deep in times long past. Realizing the divinity within everything. Druidic Ovates studied the powerful mysteries underlying nature and the stars to find formulas to restore equilibrium to mind, body, and spirit. The World Tree or Tree of Life was a symbol ladened with many sacred meanings to the Druidic Celts and acted as a visual portal key opening doorways to hidden knowledge and ancient genetic memories.
Trees had their heads in the clouds but their feet were planted firmly on the ground. The leafy tops of Trees moved with the currents of the sky winds and their roots burrowed deep into the moist nourishment of the earth.
Each year most trees lived a condensed lifetime over cyclic seasons that fostered continued growth through periods of dormancy, renewal, growth, and decay from full blossom growth, to golden leaf days, to icy stillness, to budding rebirth once again. The forest was a sacred place filled with wooded sanctuaries and shrines.The Sacred Pathway of Druidry was a Wisdom Quest that embraced life as a magical celebration and honored animal, star, stone, and Treelore. The wildwood, nature, sacred groves, restorative justice, creativity, artistry, beauty, peace, crystals, story, myth, and ancestors are all lovingly revered. There was no separation between the worlds for the Celtic and the Nature Spirits of the Trees and Sacred Groves who were authentically luminal.
The Druids, who travelled widely among the Celtic tribes, were the keepers of the Celtic Calendar which corresponded to the months with the Celtic Tree Alphabet and the vowels of the Ogham. Tree symbolism was used in their religious and philosophical teachings.
The Threefold Path of Druidic Practice based on Modern Reconstructionists Version, Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids included the Bards, the Ovates and the Druids.
The Bards were guardians of the sacredness of the Word, keepers of the ritual memories, and poetic warders of the tribe, the bards are inspired by the spirit of Awen.
The Bards were musical dream weavers, creativity seers, sacred storytellers, and divinity diviners. Bards were voice spinners, singing word magic into being.
Their melodies enchanted with the wonder of life. The songs of the bard can renewed the land when they walked the Earth journeying to sacred sites where the ancient spirit of holiness lingered still.
When the bards produce artistic works in healing lyrical lines and patterns of balanced love, light, and power once more, harmonic resonance will be restored to the planet again.
The Ovates were time travellers who journey to the realms of the ancestors and to the starry shores of future isles for information and inspiration to guide the clan or tribe.
The specialty of the Ovates was ogham, tree lore. Working with plants, herbs and other healing modalities the ovate worked with the fires of transmutation, transformation, and regeneration.Druidic Ovates were the realms travellers who journeyed to both the ancestral past and the future shores for inspirational knowledge for the guidance and benefit of the tribal clans. Their specialty was Treelore.
Utilizing this Treelore Wisdom along with plants, herbs and other healing modalities the Druidic Ovates worked with the fires of transmutation, transformation, and regeneration to restore Wholeness and Wellness to both the land and the people.
All trees were sacred to the Celts because they were imbued with the holiness of Tree Spirits, who were one of the many spiritual kindred sharing the planet with humans. Druids sought answers to the eternal questions revolving around the unfoldment of the life cycles of diverse lifeforms.The Ovate studied the powerful mysteries underlying nature and the stars to find formulas to restore equilibrium to mind, body, and spirit.
The Druids were teachers of the oral traditions, ritual guides between the worlds, inspiration bridges between Awen and Earth, fluidic learned loremasters, and custodians of the knowledge keys.
The Druids sang the universal lines of connectivity, of circularity, of cyclical change, and of creative inspiration down through the ages. They were warders of the ancestral rites of the seasonal round and of the sacredness of the land, sea, and sky.
The soul fingers of Druids strummed the strings of balanced bonding with magical precision until note after note, word after word, spiraled outward in impassioned song lines that wove multicolored leaves of unity that enhanced the sanctity of all life on the World Tree.
WOMENS ROLES IN DRUIDISM
It is a common misconception that in the ancient tradition only men could become Druids. However, this is simply untrue. In ancient Druidism women most certainly could, and did become Druids or Druidesses. It was not until the Druid reformation in the 17th and 18th centuries and the coming of Christianity that Druid orders were formed banning women from their membership. In modern Druidism women are once again seen as equals and commonly play important roles within the religion, including the role of Druidess. While ancient Druidism can most certainly not be defined as a strictly patriarchal tradition, it cannot truthfully be defined as matriarchal either. It seems to be that in Druidism, men and women had a fairly equilateral relationship and that it was just as acceptable for a woman to choose to study the Druid path as it was for her male peers. Female Druids or Druidesses are mentioned by both Greek and Roman historians as well as in Celtic myth. Female Druids, known as the Bandroai (Bandruidh), are thought to have functioned as seers and prophets. Ancient stories refer to Druidesses who could see the future and who helped their people to victory in battle.
Sources:
Carr-Gomm, Philip. The Elements of the Druid Tradition. Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element, 1991.
Matthews, John, ed. The Druid Source Book. London: Brand-ford, 1998.
DEFINITION ON DRUIDISM
Druidism is the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Celtic peoples, a polytheistic religion originating in the archaic proto-Indo-European past. It was carried into Western Europe by Indo-European tribes speaking Celtic dialects.
Druidism is a spiritual path in harmony with the natural flow of the cosmos. It is one of the many folk or “earth” religions that can brig us back into reverence for living things and the disciplines of hard work, productivity, physical strength and health. It beckons us to follow the wisdom of our ancestors.
SOURCE..http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/search/Druidism
Recommended books to read about Ancient Druidism
Druids: Preachers of Immortality (Revealing History)
By Anne Ross
Description:Druidism was the religion of the Celts and the Druids themselves were all-powerful, taking precedence over the Celtic kings. Over and above the evidence of classical texts and of archaeology, the richest source of information about the Druids is the vernacular material from Ireland and Wales. It is the author’s unparalleled familiarity with the Gaelic texts, and her ability to see Druidism through Celtic eyes, that marks out this study from earlier books and strips away modern myths about the Druids.
Secrets of the Druids
By John Matthews
Description:An in-depth study of the history, lore, and tradition of Celtic philosophy and religion, this beautifully designed book offers a fascinating look of the mysterious ways of the Druids. John Matthews is the author of more than fifty books on Celtic and Arthurian History and related subjects. He is a prominent lecturer and teacher in the United States and Europe.
