Much of what we think we know about the Druids is rife with common misconceptions as the
result of mythology and propaganda. Let's set the record straight.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma Plato once wrote, "I know one thing, and that
is that I know nothing." That rather astute observation is exactly the mindset you need
to be in when you approach the Druids. Which is to say, we know basically nothing about
them. Despite being a literate culture, the ancient
Celts had a rule against writing down their knowledge lest it fall into the wrong hands.
So everything was passed down orally and learned by heart. As a result, there are no first-hand
accounts of the ancient Druids. More or less, the only ancient information we have about
them comes from Roman writers like Julius Caesar, who was there to conquer and subdue
the people of Gaul and Britain, and Pliny the Elder, who attributes the wiping out of
the Druids to the emperor Tiberius. The Roman reason for wanting to both destroy
the Druids and skew the historical record of them was not because of the hideous rituals
they supposedly performed — more on that later — but because when conquerors want
to subdue a culture, the first thing they typically do is put down their cultural and
intellectual leaders. Since so much of what we supposedly "know" about Druids comes from
their enemies, it's important we take these myths with a grain of salt.
They were only religious leaders The word Druid in modern times has become
almost synonymous with "pagan priest" or something similar. The idea being that they were holy
men, like shaman, with a mystical connection to the natural world. They performed strange
rituals and spoke for the trees like they were the Lorax or something. But while it
is true that the Druids were a religious class among the ancient Celts, the fact is they
were also much more than that. According to Caesar's account, the Druids
were one of two esteemed social classes among the Celts, with the other being the equites,
Celtic knights or noblemen. The Druids were not only priests, performing both public and
private sacrifices, they also served a judicial role, arbitrating disputes and issuing punishments.
Additionally, they were teachers, studying such topics as philosophy, astronomy, science,
and religion, and then passing that information on to others via their oral tradition.
It could take up to 20 years of study to become a Druid, which seems like a lot, but at least
you didn’t spend the next 20 paying off student loan debt. Another plus is that Druids
didn't have to serve in the military or pay taxes.
Druids would have also been political advisors and even the chiefs of some Gallic tribes.
They would have also been trained in the medical arts. In short, the Druids were basically
living storehouses for all human knowledge. They built Stonehenge
Just about everyone is familiar with the megalithic monument on the Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge,
the UNESCO World Heritage Site where a man is a man and the children dance to the pipes
of Pan. But was this world famous landmark in fact built by the Druids as Spinal Tap's
Nigel Tufnel claims... "In ancient times, hundreds of years before
the dawn of history. Well, in short: no.
The idea that the Druids built Stonehenge began with 17th century archaeologist John
Aubrey and was then popularized by antiquarian William Stukeley. The idea has taken such
a firm root in popular consciousness that even today, modern people who identify as
neo-Druids gather at Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice.
As with many cool ideas, science is the one to blame for ruining this theory. Radiocarbon
dating shows that the stones of Stonehenge stood on Salisbury Plain more than a thousand
years before the Celts came to the British Isles from continental Europe. The monument
was likely built by a number of successive tribes native to Britain, beginning with some
Stone Age farmers. Regrettably, this definitely rules out another,
even more awesome theory for the origin of Stonehenge. Namely, the claim by Geoffrey
of Monmouth that Stonehenge was magically built by Merlin with stones stolen from giants
to be a mass grave for Britons killed in battle with the Saxons.
Samhain was the god of death Okay, let’s get this out of the way first.
You’re almost certainly pronouncing this word wrong. It's very easy as an English speaker
to look at the name and think “sam hane,” as happens in tons of TV shows and movies
about Halloween. But in Irish, the "mh" letter combo is pronounced like a w, so a better
approximation of how it should be said is "sah win." Now you know, and you can lord
that over your friends. It’s something you always hear as Halloween
approaches: Our fun candy and goblin holiday was originally a celebration of Samhain, the
Celtic God of the Dead. This might have even been the reason your religious parents didn't
want you to go trick or treating. Who would want their innocent child participating in
a pagan ritual celebrating death? But the question is: Did the Druids worship
a death god named Samhain in October? Actually, no. This misconception has its roots in a
book from 1770 by a weird writer named Col. Charles Vallencey who wanted to prove the
Druids came from Armenia for some reason. So what is Samhain, actually? The word Samhain
just means "summer's end," and represents a shifting of the seasons from summer to winter,
kind of a New Year's Eve. So it's not a deity at all, it's just a holiday.
They were all men Let's look at a few details of how the Druids
are imagined in popular conception. Many people view Druids as ascetic, male, celibate priests
wearing a long white beard and long white robes. It's probably what you've pictured
this whole time. And no wonder, it's what's popularly depicted in art, even in works going
back centuries. The reason that depictions of Druids have
been traditionally male is due to the fact that the classical sources don't mention any
female Druids. This is likely because these classical writers themselves came from male-dominated
societies. But druids actually believed in equality between men and women, with women
acting as Druids, warrior-queens like Boudica, and ambassadors.
Further evidence of female Druids comes from the fact that there were multiple words for
"female Druid" in the Irish language, including the word bandruí, which literally means "woman
Druid." They wore white robes
The traditional image of a Druid in a long white robe comes about as the result of a
mistranslation. In a passage describing the importance of the oak tree and mistletoe to
Druidic faith, Pliny the Elder describes the druid as a, quote, "priest clad in a white
robe." However, later Latin dictionaries actually
show that the word translated as robe is actually a more generic term for clothing rather than
a robe specifically. So what we know then is that Druidic priests wore white clothes
of some kind, specifically when they were climbing a tree to gather mistletoe.
Most likely the Druids wore white tunics and cloaks rather than robes. Additionally, Druids
were known to carry gilded rods made of straight white wood as a sign of their office. They
also wore cloaks made of gray or white bull hide. The fact that many Druids seem to have
received the nickname Mael, meaning "bald," indicates that the Druids may have traditionally
worn the tonsure later common among Christian clerics in Ireland. This hairstyle is distinguished
from the tonsure worn by monks elsewhere, Friar Tuck being a classic example, by instead
being clipped from ear to ear along the hairline, making you instead look like you have a huge
forehead rather than a bald spot. They were monotheistic
As with most things, we don't know a ton about what the Druids actually believed. However,
we do know that one of their major beliefs is in the immortality of the soul. Like diamonds,
souls are forever, and if you die, your soul reincarnates into another body. They also
believed that the soul rested in the head rather than the heart, which is actually surprisingly
advanced if you think about it. How many people still think of the heart as the seat of emotion
and spirit when by now science, which we know is great at ruining things, has proven that
it’s all just chemicals swirling around in our head?
That said, there is a current of belief that the ancient Druids were monotheistic, practicing
a kind of proto-Christianity. This has its roots in the modern revival of Druidism in
the 18th century. The closeness to nature of the Druids would have appealed to the Romantic
sensibility of that time. But the dominance of Christianity throughout Europe influenced
these neo-Druids to fuse their own religious beliefs with their imagined conception of
the ancient one. The Celts were in fact quite polytheistic,
believing in various gods and goddesses, which probably helped prime them to understand the
Trinity when Saint Patrick came along with his shamrock metaphor.
Okay, this one is a little tricky. Caesar reports, somewhat famously, that the
Druids would perform human sacrifices by building a giant man out of twigs, filling that man
with actual living people, and then burning it to the ground. This has been a fairly resonant
image for people, inspiring one of the all-time greatest horror films, The Wicker Man. The
1973 original of course, and not the 2006 version with Nicolas Cage and bees.
"Not the bees! Not the bees!" Pliny the Elder would go even further in his
claims, stating that the Druids practiced ritualized cannibalism, believing they gained
strength from consuming the flesh of their enemies.
In more modern times, some would claim that this was nothing but anti-Druid propaganda
on the part of the Romans and that there is no archeological evidence of human sacrifice
in Ireland. Unfortunately, science once again has to ruin things. There is, in fact, quite
a bit of evidence of human sacrifice by the Druids, not the least being a man who was
strangled, bludgeoned on the head, and then had his throat slit, a practice known as the
"three-fold death" as referenced in later writings.
However, it’s safe to say that there probably were no sacrifices using a wicker man. Though
there is evidence of wicker men in Celtic culture, they would have been images used
for processions and other less violent religious purposes.
The popular image of Druids is of bearded ascetics, and one of the additional elements
of that is the idea of celibacy. This is a claim that is further spread by the book The
21 Lessons of Merlyn, which alleges to be based on a never-before-published manuscript
of Druidic teaching called The Book of Pheryllt. However, The Book of Pheryllt is fake. Historians
have made careers out of developing point-by-point rebuttals of many of the claims of the book.
One of the things that these Druidic scholars are likely to point out is that Druids were
definitely not celibate, either in history or in legend. For one thing, there are stories
of Druids who are children of other Druids, and one of the famous Celtic kings was said
to be the son of a Druid. Furthermore, they were a hereditary caste. If they didn't get
married and have children, there would be no more Druids.
First off, let’s acknowledge that this is definitely not a myth that everyone believes,
because obviously our viewers are quite smart and are familiar with the history of Atlantis.
And they know that it’s a metaphor and not a real place. As a result, it’s fair to
say that only metaphorical people can come from the fabled lost city.
However, you’re probably pretty aware that facts never stop some people. That includes
notable crackpot Ignatius Donnelly, who claims in his book Atlantis, the Antediluvian World
that the Druids, and indeed, a large number of Irish races and classes, came from Atlantis.
The idea took root enough that it is part of The 21 Lessons of Merlyn as well as being
widespread enough that the modern Druidry website acknowledges that it is a thing that
some people believe. So what eventually happened to the Druids
if they didn't just return to Atlantis? Aside from being systematically wiped out by the
Romans, it’s suggested that they probably assimilated with Christians once the Romans
showed up. The fact that there aren't any Irish martyrs from ancient times shows that
it was a pretty peaceful transition, despite the fact that medieval Irish literature shows
the Druids as powerful wizards resisting Christianity tooth and claw. Their holy wells became Christian
holy wells, their tonsure became the Christian tonsure, and so on. In this way, it's not
impossible to imagine that a bit of the ancient Druids still survives with us today.
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