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 Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:33 pm
Druids also have magical skills: the hero Cuchulainn has returned from the land of the fairies after having been enticed thither by a fairywoman named Fand, whom he is now unable to forget. He is given a potion by some Druids, which banishes all memory of his recent adventures and which also rids his wife Emer of the pangs of jealousy. More remarkable still is the story of Etain.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:34 pm
This lady, now the wife of Eochaid Arem, high-king of Ireland, was in a former existence the beloved of the god Mider, who again seeks her love and carries her off. The king has recourse to his Druid Dalgn, who requires a whole year to discover the haunt of the couple. This he accomplished by means of four wands of yew inscribed with ogam characters.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:35 pm
The following description of the band of Cathbus Druids occurs in the epic tale, the Tain bo Cuailnge: The attendant raises his eyes towards heaven and observes the clouds and answers the band around him. 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.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:36 pm
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:36 pm
Revival William Stukeley created this version of a Druid - shortening the beard, removed the mistletoe, turned the bag at his side into a sort of bottle or gourd, and placed an axe-head in his belt. In the 18th century, England and Wales experienced a Druid revival, inspired by e. g. John Aubrey, John Toland and William Stukely. There is strong evidence to suggest that William Blake was involved in the Druid revival and may have been an Archdruid.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:37 pm
Aubrey was the first modern writer to connect Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments with Druidry, a misconception that shaped ideas of Druidry during much of the 19th century.
Modern Druidic groups have their roots in this revival, and some claim that Aubrey was an archdruid in possession of an uninterrupted tradition of Druidic knowledge, though Aubrey, an uninhibited collector of lore and gossip, never entered a corroborating word in his voluminous surviving notebooks.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:37 pm
Toland was fascinated by Aubrey's Stonehenge theories, and wrote his own book, without crediting Aubrey. He has also been claimed as an Archdruid. The Ancient Druid Order claim that Toland held a gathering of Druids from all over Britain and Ireland in a London tavern, the Appletree, in 1717.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:38 pm
The Ancient Order of Druids itself was founded in 1781, led by Henry Hurle and apparently incorporating Masonic ideas.
A central figure of the Druidic revival is Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg. His writings, published posthumously as The Iolo Manuscripts (184 cool , and Barddas (1862), remain influential in the contemporary Druidic movements. Williams claimed to have collected ancient knowledge in a "Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain" he had organized, but in the 1970s, draft manuscripts of the texts were discovered among Williams' papers, exposing the texts as his own compositions.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:39 pm
Druidism today
Modern Druidism (a.k.a. Modern Druidry) is a continuation of the 18th-century revival and is thus thought to have some, though not many, connections to the Ancient Religion. Modern Druidism has two strands, the cultural and the religious. Cultural Druids hold a competition of poetry, literature and music known as the Eisteddfod amongst the Celtic peoples (Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Breton, etc). Modern religious Druidry is a form of Neopaganism built largely around writings produced in the 18th century and later, plus the relatively sparse Roman and early medieval sources.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:40 pm
It is not always easy to distinguish between the two strands, because religiously-oriented Druid orders may welcome members of any or no religious background while culturally-oriented orders may not inquire about the religious beliefs of members. Both types of Druid order, then, may contain both religiously-oriented and non-religiously oriented members. Many notable Britons have been initiated into Druidic orders, including Winston Churchill. Churchill's case illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between the two strands, because historians are not even certain which order he joined, the Ancient Order of Druids or the Ancient and Archaeological Order of Druids, let alone for what purpose he joined.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:42 pm
A Druidess, holding mistletoe and a sickle, standing next to a dolmen. A nineteenth-century painting shows a Druidess holding both the sickle and a sprig of mistletoe. She is also standing next to a megalithic structure. Many Druids were women; the Celtic woman enjoyed more freedom and rights than women in any other contemporary culture, including the rights to enter battle, and divorce her husband. Though through history we have lost much information about them, though this will be discussed later.
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:44 pm
 Druids at Stone Circles - Stonehenge"Druidry or Druidism was the religion of the ancient druids, the priestly class in ancient Celtic and Gaulish societies through much of Western Europe north of the Alps and in the British Isles. Druidic practices were part of the culture of all the tribal peoples called Keltoi and Galatai by Greeks and Celtae and Galli by Romans, cultures we identify by the modern words "Celtic" and "Gaelic".
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