A Longer History

About 2500 years ago, and possibly long before that, at each end of the Indo-European arc, tribal spiritualities emerged that would eventually grow to become flourishing modern movements, with adherents all over the world. While the earliest versions of what would later become the Hindu and Jain religions emerged in the Indus valley, in western Europe at about the same time, writers began to record the existence of Druidism.

Its practice was first noted in two Greek works over two thousand years ago in around 200 BCE although both works were since lost. In 50 BCE Julius Caesar wrote that Druidism originated in Britain, and although some claim that Druids could be found across much of Europe, from Ireland in the west to Anatolia (now Turkey) in the east, scholars now believe this is unlikely. Instead Druids were probably native just to the British Isles, Ireland and western Gaul (now France).

Although written accounts seem to have begun 2,200 years ago, Druidry was probably in existence for a good deal of time before then, and it seems likely that as a type of religion or magical practice it evolved out of earlier pre-Druidic cult practices.

Proto-Druids amongst Proto-Celts

By about 6,500 years ago people were starting to build stone monuments in western Europe – particularly in Ireland, the British Isles, and in Brittany, although similar standing stones and circles can be found as far afield as Peru and Madagascar.

Although the Druids have always been associated in the popular imagination with stone circles such as Stonehenge, academics until recently dismissed this idea. Historians used to say that the Druids couldn’t have used Stonehenge and all the other stone circles in Britain, because the Druids were the priests of the Celts, and the Celts only arrived in Britain in 500 BCE. Since no stone monuments were built after 1400 BCE, they pointed to the gap of nine hundred years separating the last of the stone circles from the arrival of the Druids. But in the sixties many historians changed their minds. They realized that the origin of the so-called Celtic tribes was far more complex than originally presumed, and suggested instead that early or Proto-Celts were probably in Britain as early as 2000 BCE – when the great stone monuments were still being built – and that they could well have been involved in their use or construction.

Forty years later academic opinion is still divided. Some experts emphasize the lack of continuity between religious structures and practices in the second and first millennia BCE. But others point to the new sense of continuity in the genetics and culture of the British, with the rejection of the idea of a Celtic ‘invasion’. This second school of thought makes it possible to again see the Druids as the priests and priestesses of the stone circles, a tendency reinforced by the increasing recognition of the importance of ritual astronomy in the construction of these monuments. If we take this view we might agree with John Michell when he wrote in A Little History of Astro-Archaeology : ‘science restored the Druids to their old temple, Stonehenge, wiser and more venerable than before.’

The Christian period

The era of Druidry that the Irish and Classical authors describe lasted from perhaps 400BCE to 600CE – about a thousand years. But by the sixth century all of Europe was Christian, and overt pagan practice had probably ceased to exist. Although Christianity was antagonistic to other faiths, it was also built out of many elements of paganism: the eucharist of bread and wine was also the ritual feast of the Eleusinian mysteries, for example, and we can read papal bulls which change the celebration of Christ’s birth from springtime to coincide with celebrations linked to the Winter Solstice. In a similar manner Christian saints, such as St Brighid and St. Dionysus, built upon the histories and reputations of pagan gods and goddesses. And sacred sites were co-opted to the new faith, with churches built upon shrines to gods such as Apollo or within sacred groves. This meant that pagan cults such as Druidism, rather than being wiped out, were actually assimilated into Christianity, creating a complex fusion, which encouraged the Revival Druids of the 17th & 18th centuries to try to discern the Druidry within Christianity.

In addition, Christian clerics transcribed elements of a tradition which until their arrival had been oral, and so we have records of the ancient laws of Ireland, which were probably developed by the Druids since they fulfilled the role of judges, and we have accounts of the mythology and stories of Ireland and Wales which modern Druids believe contain much of Druid wisdom and teachings.

The Recent Past

The Druid Revival began as an interest of scholars in their pre-Christian heritage, and this resulted in the development of two different manifestations of Druidry: cultural Druidism formed to foster the Welsh, Cornish and Breton languages through Eisteddfodau, and fraternal Druidism which, like Freemasonry, was created to support members and charitable causes.

From the 18th century certain writers had suggested that Freemasonry was a direct descendant of Druidism, and felt that Masons were practicing a sort of latter-day Druidry. Some members of the fraternal Druid organisations may well have treated their activities as mystical as well as fraternal, but this spirituality was firmly embedded in a Christian context with a bible being present at every meeting, and discussion of religion forbidden. Even so, some individuals and small groups may have treated Druidry as a distinct spiritual path from the time of William Stukeley, but it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that a third type of Druidism began to be noticed: a type that publicly promoted Druidry as a spiritual practice in its own right.

At the opening 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 Ancient Druid Order, 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. A complex tapestry was starting to weave itself, which drew on the inspiration of the ancient Druids, the work of the Revival Druids, and the perennial teachings of the Western Mystery Tradition, which in their turn drew on sources as ancient as Pythagoreanism and neo-Platonism.

In the 1940’s and 50’s the Ancient Druid Order attracted to it two figures who would act as catalysts for the explosion of interest in paganism that we are experiencing today. Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols both joined the Order and later Gardner became the seminal figure to promote the religion of Wicca, or Witchcraft, while Nichols – enthused by Robert Graves’ White Goddess which described his discovery of a Druidic tree-language – developed Druidism by focusing its concerns on Celtic lore and mythology. Together they elaborated an eightfold cycle of observances which now lies at the foundations of both Wiccan and Druid practice.