Druid Mysteries

by Philip Carr-Gomm

  Turning to the Scottish material, it might be thought that this would hardly be reliable as a source of information on the Druids, having been transcribed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But this material, which includes the massive collection made by Alexander Carmichael, published in six volumes between 1900 and 1961 and entitled Carmina Gadelica, serves only to substantiate the understanding of our pre-Christian heritage obtained from the earlier classical, Irish and Welsh sources. It also bears living witness to the extraordinary ability of cultural and spiritual traditions to survive for thousands of years being passed only from mouth to ear.9

  It is true that all these sources of information at our disposal have been influenced, some might say corrupted, en route to the present day. Copying errors, together with sins of omission and commission, no doubt prompted by the Christianity of the copyists, may well have changed the material over time. The Welsh material in particular was subject to the influences of the troubadour tradition, of which the Welsh story-tellers formed a part, and it has been subjected too to corruption by the forgeries of a stonemason by the name of Iolo Morganwg.

  Despite these changes, it can still be stated that the corpus of material which we have at our disposal for an understanding of Druidry is vast indeed, and to this day its riches have yet to be fully researched and appreciated. Even now only about a quarter of the Celtic texts that deal with the subject of pre-Christian Celtic spirituality and Druidry have been translated into English.

  CLUES IN WOOD AND STONE

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  Our knowledge of the ‘classical’ period of Druidry can be supplemented, to a small extent, by a study of inscriptions, carving and sculpture. The epigraphic evidence available to us consists of some 360 inscriptions in what has become known as the tree-language of the Druids, Ogham, found chiefly on memorial stones in the south-west of Ireland and Wales, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries AD, and hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions, mainly found in Gaul, to Celtic gods or goddesses, although these date almost exclusively from the time when Britain and Gaul formed part of the Roman Empire.10

  The iconographic evidence consists of sculptures and carvings, in both wood and stone, of human and animal forms dating from the sixth century BC. These two sources of evidence, in words and images, the epigraphic and the iconographic, become illuminating when set within the context provided for us by the textual evidence supported by the findings of archaeology, language studies and comparative mythology.

  In coming to these sources of evidence we are presented with a rich and exciting field of study which in recent years or so has helped us form a picture of Druidry which suggests a continuity of tradition from the Neolithic right through to the Celtic era.

  A CONTINUITY WITH THE STONE AGE – THE MEGALITHIC BUILDERS AS PROTO-DRUIDS

  Neolithic farming communities dated to 4500 BC have been traced in southern Britain and Ireland, and as far north as the Orkneys to 3500 BC. It was these ‘Stone-Age’ communities who were the megalith builders and who erected their numerous stone monuments during the course of about two and a half thousand years, from 3500 to 1000 BC.

  Those of us who envisaged our Stone-Age ancestors as ‘rude savages’ have been forced radically to alter our understanding of them in the light of discoveries pioneered initially by Sir Norman Lockyer at the beginning of the last century, but only fully developed in recent years with the detailed surveying and computing work of Professors Thom and Hawkins. This work suggests that the stone circles and other monuments of the Neolithic people were erected with an astonishingly sophisticated use of mathematics, which reveals our enlightened ancestors to have been in possession of an understanding of ‘Pythagorean’ mathematics over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born.

  Megalithic remains in the form of burial mounds, standing stones and stone circles have been found all over the world – in Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, in the Pacific islands, Malaya and Borneo, in Madagascar, India, Pakistan and Ethiopia, in the Middle and Near-East, in Africa and the Americas. Owing to their similarities of construction, it has been tempting to suggest that these megalith builders originated in one or another place, and that the spread of these sites is due to their migrations. In reality, it is unnecessary to invoke migration theories to explain their ubiquity. The most convincing explanation for their worldwide distribution is found by looking at the theories of both archaeology and analytical psychology.

  Current archaeology suggests that these monuments are similar all over the world because they represent the very simplest of designs – single upright stones, or several uprights supporting a horizontal, as in dolmens and burial chambers. The analytical psychology pioneered by C. G. Jung suggests that our own individual consciousness is embedded in a collective unconscious which results in similar manifestations of the collective human psyche occurring in widely separated parts of the world – no physical connections are required for similar artistic, cultural, religious or architectural phenomena to appear in different regions.

  What is known for sure, however, is that the megalithic monuments of western Europe are among the oldest in the world. Carbon-14 dating places the majority of them between the fifth and second millennium BC. Since they are older than the monuments of Africa or Asia, the Near or Middle East they cannot have been ‘seeded’ from the south or east. Jean-Pierre Mohen says: ‘The discovery of this early time scale (in Europe) poses in new terms the question of the genesis of these monuments: we must envisage a local origin for each of the main groups – Iberian, Breton, Irish and Scandinavian.’11

  Historians used to believe the Druids could not have built the stone monuments because the Druids were Celtic according to the classical reports, and the Celts had not arrived in Britain at this early age. However, as we shall soon see, this opinion has started to change and it is now acceptable to call the Neolithic megalith builders of Britain proto-Druids, which distinguishes them from the Druids known to us from the classical texts. (The term ‘proto-Druid’ simply means ‘early Druid’, the prefix ‘proto’ meaning ‘first-formed’ or ‘ancestral’.)

  This primal, ancestral Druidry took a major step forward in its development when it merged or interacted with the traditions and beliefs of incoming peoples who have been termed ‘proto-Celts’. The origins of the Celts themselves, however, are as difficult to determine and as prone to academic disagreement as are the origins of the Druids.

  THE ORIGINS OF THE CELTS

  Even using the term ‘Celt’ is fraught with difficulties. Colin Renfrew, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, has identified at least eight senses in which the term is used. Renfrew concludes with ‘the strong suspicion that the term “Celts” is not a proper ethnic term . . . but was imposed on a wide variety of barbarian tribes by classical geographers.’12

  It is important to understand that Renfrew does not deny ‘that there was indeed a language group, which since the eighteenth century has been termed “Celtic”, nor that there are significant archaeological observations to be made about the material culture and way of life at the relevant places and times’. But he stresses that ‘these different and valid perceptions should not be confused by lumping them all together as “Celtic”’.

  The forebears of the Celts were probably the Beaker folk, who originated either in central Europe or Iberia in the third millennium BC, and the Battle-Axe folk, who almost certainly originated in the steppe-lands of southern Russia at about the same time. The fusion of these folk in central Europe in about the second millennium BC resulted in successive cultures known as Unetice, Tumulus and Urnfield. Some scholars argue that towards the close of the second millennium BC the Urnfield culture becomes identifiable as ‘proto-Celtic’. From about 700 BC some of the descendants of the Urnfield people have been labelled the Hallstatt culture, which can safely be regarded as fully Celtic, as opposed to proto-Celtic. The Hallstatt culture is traced for only 200 years, before it gives way to the La Tène culture, which survived unti
l the coming of the Romans.

  If just the Hallstatt and La Tène type of cultures are regarded as Celtic then the Celts only make their appearance in Britain from about 500 BC. But if we see the ancestors of the Celts as the Beaker and Battle-Axe folk, and term them proto-Celtic as some scholars do, then we can trace the coming of proto-Celts to Britain at least as early as 2000 BC, since Beaker sites in Britain have been identified from about this time.

  Professor Renfrew argues against this theory, claiming that although it is favoured by continental archaeologists, ‘most [British] archaeologists do not now think in terms of beaker-bearing immigrants on any scale’. Instead Renfrew, drawing on studies of historical linguistics, favours a theory of Indo-European origins, which was originally popular in the nineteenth century, but which – with revised underpinnings – he re-presents. He suggests that before about 6000 BC in the eastern part of Anatolia (now Turkey) people speaking languages ancestral to all the Indo-European languages were to be found, and that by 4000 BC some of these earliest Indo-European speakers would have reached Europe and possibly Britain.

  The Celts are seen as originating from these Indo-Europeans. From the sixth millennium BC onwards they expanded from their homelands both eastward and westward, reaching Britain and Ireland in the west, and India in the east.

  Studies in comparative mythology show us that Sanskrit literature documents ancient Indian rituals which are similar to those traceable in Celtic Ireland, and there are certain striking parallels which can be drawn between some Hindu deities and Celtic gods, such as the goddesses Danu of India and Dana of Ireland. Further similarities can be traced among the religious traditions of the Indo-Europeans, which help to give us a picture of Druidic practice that can be said to reach back in its origins to the very beginnings of Indo-European culture before 6000 BC. These similarities relate to the sanctity and importance of water; the probable offering of sacrifices; the religious symbolism of weapons; the use in some areas of circular and spiral motifs in religious art; a concern for calendrical and probably astrological observation; the sanctity of fire; and the sacred nature of the number three.

  In many ways, the functions and conduct of the learned and privileged classes of Bard, Ovate and Druid were so similar to that of the Brahmin caste in India, that one scholar has suggested that an account of them reads almost like ‘a chapter in the history of India under another name’.13

  DRAVIDIAN DRUIDS

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  My old Druid teacher, Ross Nichols, believed the Druids may well have originated at an even earlier time – amongst a group of pre Indo-European peoples in India known as the Dravidians. These people were Jains. Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and Ross once wrote: ‘Of the known cultural communities it is the Jains who seem most like a society from which Druidry could have originated . . . The origins of Druidic traditions go back to a past remote indeed, almost as far back as civilisation itself, and at least into Neolithic times. There are links with Aryan and early Hindu culture and what is now the witch cult: reverence for both sun and moon, fivefold and threefold bases of teaching, circular dancing as worship, burning of the dead, the cult of certain animals, the existence of a priest-ruler caste, transmission of teaching by long memorised poems.’14

  It should be noted that although some scholars have seen links between the Dravidians and the Druids, both the Druidism reported by the classical authors and its modern manifestations seem to bear little resemblance to Jainism past or present. When looking so far into the distant past, whether we are examining the theories of Ross Nichols, Colin Renfrew or anyone else, we will probably never be sure that we have found the truth.

  A BALANCED VIEW

  * * *

  Historians used to claim that the Celts came to Britain in a series of invasions from about 500 BC, and that the Druids, being Celts, could not therefore have built the stone circles. The antiquarians of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Druid Revival and the modern Druid orders who claimed that the Druids built such places as Stonehenge were scorned by academics who believed that the completion of the stone circles antedated the arrival of the Celts by over five hundred years.

  The evidence available to us now, however, suggests the revival and modern Druids are right about their ancient forebears, whether we consider the proto-Celts (and hence the proto-Druids) to have emerged in Britain in around 2000 BC, as Beaker folk, or even earlier as Indo-Europeans, as Colin Renfrew argues.

  A balanced view of the evidence suggests that Druidry is best conceived as a tradition, a set of beliefs and practices, whose roots lie both in the Indo-European ancestors of the Celts and in the native megalithic culture. Both undoubtedly carried with them a formidable corpus of mathematical, astronomical, engineering and philosophical knowledge which fused together in Ireland and Britain, and probably only subsequently in Gaul, to form the powerful and multi-faceted group of Bards, Ovates and Druids that are referred to in the classical texts.

  Whether we believe Druidry’s origins lie in the spiritual world, in the temples of Atlantis, the rites of the Dravidians, or the gradual merging of Indo-European and Stone-Age cultures in western Europe, we can be sure that its roots stretch far and deep.

  EXERCISE

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  After reading this chapter, spend a few moments forgetting all that you have read, make yourself comfortable, and allow yourself to come to a sense of inner centredness and calm. For meditation you can be seated cross-legged on the floor or in the usual upright sitting position on a chair. Some Western esoteric teachings state that to sit cross-legged on the ground is an Eastern posture inappropriate for Western meditation. This is incorrect. The cross-legged position is depicted in Celtic art and is therefore not exclusively ‘Eastern’. It provides a sense of humility, of being in touch with the earth, and of being well grounded. Many people, however, find it difficult to meditate in this position, and prefer to be seated in a chair.

  Close your eyes and feel all your concerns falling away from you. Often, in Druid ceremonies, having entered the circle, we begin by saying, ‘Let all disturbing thoughts be laid aside’. Focus for a little while on your breathing, and then become aware of the sun rising. You might do this by imagining you are on a hillside or mountain top gazing at the horizon. Or you might feel a sun rising in your heart, or your solar plexus or in an internal way that cannot be described in words.

  Bathe in the light and warmth of the sun for as long as you like. Then become aware of being fully yourself again. Feel full of vitality and strength. Become conscious of your physical body and surroundings, and when you feel ready, open your eyes. Do not stand up quickly – stretch a little before standing up or continuing with the next chapter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE BRIDGE OF A THOUSAND YEARS:

  HOW DRUIDRY SURVIVED THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY

  To view nature as imbued with soul, and each creature in the universe as alive and communicative, is a form of animism consistent with the earliest spiritual framework of the ancient Celts. But it has survived into Christian and even post-Christian times.

  Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head – Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit

  DURING ITS LIKELY beginnings in Neolithic times, Druidry was probably at first animistic and shamanistic in nature, until gradually it evolved into its three separate streams of Bardic, Ovate and Druid practice described by the classical authors. This period of sophisticated, even complex, spiritual practice continued probably for at least a thousand years before being eclipsed by the arrival of Christianity. During this time, from around the fourth century BC to the sixth century AD, Druidry may well have received influences from the Egyptian and Greek civilisations, for sages and philosophers throughout the ages have always undertaken pilgrimages and journeys to exchange ideas and knowledge. Certainly the Romans brought their influence to bear upon local indigenous spiritualities, including Druidry, and in addition it is said that legionnaires brought with them ideas and practices f
rom the Mithraic mysteries of Persia to Britain.

  Support for the view that the doctrines of the ancient Druids of this ‘classical’ period were influenced by the Egyptian, Greek and also the Orphic mysteries comes from tantalisingly brief statements of the classical authors who suggest that the Druids embraced the doctrines of Pythagoras. Pythagoras, who lived during the sixth century BC, claimed initiation into all the Greek mysteries and to have studied in Egypt. He founded an initiatory society, which accepted women and men equally, in Krotone (now Crotone in Italy). There he taught esoteric doctrines relating to the progress of the soul, reincarnation, music and mathematics. His doctrines seem to have been influenced not only by the Greek and Egyptian mystery schools, but also by the Orphic mysteries and by Thracian shamanism, possibly learned from his Thracian slave, who later – it is said – taught the Druids. Pythagoreanism has had a powerful influence on Western culture and spirituality: a neo-Pythagorean revival began in the first century BC which profoundly influenced gnosticism, hermetism and alchemy and evolved into the neo-Platonism of the third century AD.