DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
The Three Staves
HTML https://3staves.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Druidism
*****************************************************
#Post#: 9--------------------------------------------------
What IS a druid
DIR By: Phoenix Grove
Date: March 5, 2012, 4:02 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
We all know the contentiousness surrounding this question, and
within 3 posts of this forum, it has come up, so let's address
it, shall we?
As far as I can tell, there are about 5-7 camps that have called
themselves druids: The neo-druids (like those of ADF), the
revival druids (like OBOD), those that follow the medieval
and/or classical sources (Celtic reconstructionists), those
described by the classical sources themselves, the eco-druids
(who are primarily in it for the nature focus, with or without
any sort of theology), and other groups/solitaries who I think
of as eclectic merely because there is no apparent consistency
in the combination of pantheism/panentheism/polytheism/etc and
focus. Add to that the natural (convergent and divergent)
evolution of practice over time, and there are more kinds of
druids than you can shake a stick at. I personally consider
myself a fundamentalist druid, so I shake a stick at everybody.
;)
Now to the question that has me starting this thread:
"If you strip away to the point of bare bones then why refer to
yourself as a druid. these are just labels after all and are
used to identify ones self to the community around us. If you
have no reasons or wants to do this then why claim to be a
druid?"
I never said that I have no reason or want to call myself a
druid. I do, in fact. Furthermore, I believe that I have more
of a right to the title than do any of the degenerate forms
listed above.
We know that the neo-druid orders were largely influenced by
wiccan theory, which itself was a synthetic religion. It did
not arise because somebody had a great revelation, shared it,
and had it grow support. It was manufactured by people who sat
down and tried to make up a system of religion and/or magic that
fit the druid aesthetic. I'd go further and say that RDNA, the
progenitor of many of these orders, is actually outside them, as
it was begun as purely protest, and as I've said in my blog, no
more makes one a druid than wearing a baseball cap with the word
during Druid Day at the Ballpark would. As time has gone on,
some of these orders have attempted to grow closer to what the
historical druids believed or practiced, but because of their
initial creation as a synthetic experience, the product is
contaminated with ideas that were demonstrably not a part of any
original druid tradition.
We know that the revival druid orders were largely influenced by
freemasonry and fraud. Uncle Iolo was a great bard, but he
wasn't transcribing from the past; he was making stuff up.
Again, the problems of synthetic religion, coming from a man
rather than from the universe at large, divorce the adherents
from the reality.
We know that the medieval scholars were writing about things
that had gone the way of the dodo many generations before, and
that they were writing from the adopted perspective of Christian
dogma. By their time, a druid was no more than a sorcerer, and
likely an unwitting agent of the devil. Furthermore, the two
classes that we know joined the ranks of the Church, the druids
becoming bishops and the bards becoming priests, leaves out a
class that we know existed in the classical period, the very
class that is most concerned with the natural order. If there
ever was a balance of knowledge and wisdom, it had been lost,
some say to the witches of succeeding eras (though I don't
necessarily take that view). The very heart of druidry, if one
is to use the awen analogy, the central beam of light or shadow
that is at once two times of the year, was gone.
We also have heard the theory that the druids of the classical
period have been misrepresented by the Alexandrian school. I
personally think that their assessments were likely fairly
accurate, which would indicate a religious structure that had
become integrated to some extent, but which still cynically
recognized truly local deities, while acknowledging to one
another the overarching archetypal nature of the myths. This, I
believe, was the inevitable result of the "original" pantheistic
or animistic druids, untouched and unaltered by influence from
outside the expanse of their territories. That the
archaeological discoveries at Camulodunum, for instance, show
that these learned people were using Roman tools, albeit in
potentially native ways, and as we have also heard of the Celtic
use of Greek for writing not related to theology, we can be
fairly certain that even the classical druids were a
contaminated form of the native spiritual practice.
So, yes, it's just a word. Do any of these groups consistently
represent the people who it would have originally applied to,
however? I think not. I am a fundamentalist. I am a
pantheist, not a polytheist. I am an animist. My practice is
centered in the real world, on a real oak tree that is 100' tall
and 75' wide, covered in mistletoe at the four quarters and in
some of the best land a valley oak could want, on the land
(North America) where all oak trees come from in the first
place. I treat myself with its young leaves, and I eat its
acorns when the laughing woodpeckers don't take them all first.
I house the bees that pollinate the apple trees planted all
around. I protect it from that which would harm it. I am a
reverent naturalist. And yes, I am a druid.
*****************************************************
Page 1 of 1