A Druid FAQ

[Under Ongoing Development] 

What is a Druid?

Historically, the druids were the priestly class in ancient Celtic societies, the ancestral culture(s) of the Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton peoples of Western Europe.  The name “druid” may mean “strong knower,” though scholars are in disagreement about its origins. It does seem fairly clear that the word comes from two roots in Indo-European (the asterisks indicate linguistic reconstructions):  *deru “firm, strong, steadfast; tree, oak” and *wid “see; know” (American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots).

Druids served as healers, teachers, astronomers, judges, historians and poets, and were famed for the lengthy and rigorous training required to join their ranks.  Most of the little we know about them comes from Roman and Greek historians, who often wrote with bias against them, since the druids, not surprisingly, resisted the eastern invaders who imposed foreign laws and customs on the Celtic tribes.

The Druid revival began some 300 years ago, growing through turns and trials into the druid movement of today.  As historian Stuart Piggott observes in The Druids (1975 ed.), “[W]hy has a priesthood within the barbarian pre-Roman Celtic religion, attested by a handful of some thirty scrappy references in Greek and Roman authors, many little-known and some downright obscure, come even to be remembered at all except by scholars nearly two thousand years later after its official supporession by Roman authority?” (10).  One simple though subtle answer is that it fulfills a spiritual hunger many share today.  And as John Michael Greer, leader of one modern druid organization, observes, “Druidry, although born alongside the Industrial Revolution, traced out a radically different way of relating to the Earth.  Its principled refusal to join industrial society’s war against nature gave it a strong appeal to people seeking a saner way of life” (The Druidry Handbook, 40).

What do Druids believe?

Druids can be characterized by a reverence for the natural world and the often profound lessons it can teach, a striving for excellence in the arts and sciences, and a pragmatic emphasis on living one’s beliefs in everyday life.  Some Druids today are monotheist and Christian; others are Pagan and polytheist.  For further information, visit the websites below, and read a couple of the excellent books available:  The Druidry Handbook by John Michael Greer, Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism by Isaac Bonewits are both very recent, and there are other recommended texts by Philip Carr-Gomm and Ross Nichols.

More specifically, most Druids would probably assent to the following:
* The divine permeates all existence, and is therefore as immanent as it is transcendent, or vice versa.
* The purpose of this life is to express ever more fully our spiritual nature, and to serve life by giving back in some form through our talents, skills and gifts.
* “What you do comes back to you; what goes around comes around.” Or as the Hebrew Bible puts it, “God requireth what is past.”
* Everything in this world exists in balance or equilibrium. Extremes tend not to last long.
* The body is a garment for spirit, and after it wears out we continue in other forms of existence, possibly returning to earth in a new body, depending on the lessons we need to learn.
* The natural world is one of the ways that the divine reaches us — one of the bodies which Spirit wears around us.

What are some Druid organizations?

Among the many Druid organizations are Keltria, ADF (Ar nDraiocht Fein — Our Own Druidism), AODA (Ancient Order of Druids in America), OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids), and RDNA (Reformed Druids of North America).

Can you be a solitary Druid?

Group religious practice is not for everyone.  For some, previous negative experience with a religious group makes them hesitant to commit to another one.  For others, their lives, personalities or beliefs make solitary practice more practical, convenient or acceptable.  Community has its advantages and appeal, but solitary practice is also valid and effective.

Weren’t the druids wiped out by the Romans?

The short answer is simply “yes.”  The Druid revival included use of the name, and that is how practitioners of this form of spirituality have been known since then.  In the absence of anyone else continuing the ancient traditions, modern Druids claim the name.

Then how can you be a real Druid?

There are no other Druids who can be more “real” than living ones.  We are as real as we can make our lives right now, in practicing reverence, working with the natural world, and seeking out learning and wisdom.  Can anyone be more real than that? If so, Druids will want to learn from that person.

Didn’t the druids perform human sacrifice?

There is evidence such sacrifices did occur.  Julius Caesar in particular has little good to say about the druids, and in fact druids may have executed prisoners of war in this fashion on occasion.  Just as other religions have abandoned ancient practices through changes in understanding (for instance, Jews no longer sacrifice animals in the temple in Jerusalem; the Catholic church no longer burns witches at the stake), so Druids today understand that all life is sacred and do not perform blood sacrifices. 

Aren’t Druids members of a cult?

“Cult” originally meant simply a group of ritual practices for worship.  Now it is typically a “snarl” word, mostly intended to malign and slander any religious group someone doesn’t happen to like.  Most new religions gets tarred with the name.  Just as the early Christian “cult” was accused of child sacrifice by their neighbors in ancient times, so modern groups of minority religious practitioners may be accused of any number of outlandish practices and labelled as “cults.”

Fortunately, a cult may also be more rationally identified by the degree and kind of control it exerts over its members’ activities and beliefs.  One useful instrument to evaluate such influence is the Cult Danger Evaluation Frame, available here in several languages.  It has been used by the FBI, among other institutions, in measuring the potential dangers of suspect groups.  As its creator notes in his introduction on the same site, the evaluation “is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations to do so.”

How do you know you’re not misled by Satan?

This is an old query — but the same question applies with equal gravity to the questioner.  If we engage followers of two different religions, and each religion teaches that the other is mistaken or evil, there is no way out of an endless argument of “you’re wrong and I’m right” until we ask for actual evidence, not just belief.  Without such evidence, then each group has no reasonable basis for its beliefs; they are thus merely personal preferences.   As Greer (cited above) points out in A World Full of Gods, “To say that people are prevented from [accepting the "right" religion] by sin, the activities of a devil, or some similar factor is to engage in the sort of special pleading already criticised in this book; by the same logic, after all, the person making such a claim could just as easily believe in her own religion because sin, a devil, or the like was keeping her away from some other faith” (138). 

Happily, Druids aren’t interested in converting anyone to their beliefs.  They have plenty to do without proselytizing … there’s sky and water and earth to experience, crafts to learn and skills to sharpen, wisdom to seek, gardens to grow and trees to plant, life to love in its fullness of pain and pleasure, and gratitude to express for all of it.

Why is your blog named “A Druid’s Year”?

Because it records the experiences of one person following one Druid path, and the year is a natural cycle of festivals, observances and practices that forms a part of most Druid practices.

Why are you a Druid?

One of the readers of this blog asked me, “What was the factor that led you to this path?” Spirit has moved me to where I am now, and so the easy – even facile or glib but also true — answer is Spirit. I find myself continuing to ask how to fulfill my spiritual purpose in this life, and I trust where I am led. I can’t do it any other way. There’s nothing else left in me.  I’m spiritually empty when I don’t do this. That’s my faith, if anyone wants to know. The gods speak to us through all things, and often most powerfully through the natural world, the air we breathe every moment, the water that nourishes and sustains the skin of the planet and our own bodies, the heat of the sun and other fires that keep us warm, the earth which sustains us and feeds us. It’s the “dailiness”  of the divine — how the ten thousand things of the worlds greet us each moment of our conscious existence.  These things are not anything that I worship, but what I celebrate as the physical hands and bodies and instruments of the divine in our lives. I’ve increasingly come to realize how much more responsible I am to live my entire life as a gift, on loan for however many years I’m here. It’s not a chance to indulge myself as much as I can, or to consume as much as all our advertisers urge us to. Instead, I want to answer with how I shape and conduct my life for the gift of green earth and physical existence. There’s a sweet hunger in me to devote more and more of my life to Spirit and to celebrate all the gifts of this physical world we inhabit, and which we are too often trashing and ravaging and disrespecting. What I can do matters, no matter how small. Each step is one step more. And this blog is also a step, where I strive to be true to this ideal.