For literally thousands of years, the Druids have sat in a place of magic and mystery in
western Europe.
Today, we might think of shapeshifting and nature magic, but the Druids really existed
as mediators between Celtic people and their gods.
Let’s dig down and talk about the story behind the fantasy staple, the Druid.
Hey folks, I’m Tristan Johnson, and this is Step Back.
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When you think of the druids, a few images come to mind.
Some think of pagan priests worshipping the summer solstice at Stonehenge.
Some of the geekier amongst us might think of the shape-changing nature mages of D&D.
A few of you might even drag up images of the horrific wicker man, filled with people
and set ablaze in sacrifice to unnamed pagan gods.
Well, I can tell you all that all three of those are wrong… mostly.
Druids were holy people of the Celtic culture, and I say people because there were both men
and women druids.
While that might make you think of the clergy, the druids held a place in society a little
different from that.
They were considered holy, but also functioned as philosophers, teachers, advisors to nobility,
judges, lorekeepers, and practicers of medicine.
We actually don't have a good idea of when the first druids came into being.
The earliest written records date back to about 2,400 years ago.
It’s very likely much older, but how much older, we can’t really say.
The other mystery is just how widespread druids were.
They undoubtedly existed in Britain and France, probably originating in the former.
However, lots of clues hint to druids living in Northern Italy, Spain, and Turkey.
They also might have followed Celtic mercenaries as far as Egypt and Judea.
Becoming a druid was a sought after, but a very intense task.
Many who joined the order did so of their own accord or were sent to become a druid
by their families.
Their instruction would happen in forests and caves, and the details kept secret.
They studied nature, astronomy, religious lore, ancient songs, and philosophy.
Training consisted of learning massive amounts of information by heart.
Because their order believed in the sacredness of oral tradition, something we’ll explore
a bit later, the memorisation task was immense.
It appeared to take as much as 20 years to become a druid.
Druids held an exceptional place in Celtic society.
They would be exempt from military service, and taxation.
They maintained the regular religious rituals and sacrifices in Celtic communities and could
choose to excommunicate people from them, labelling them as social outcasts.
They acted as judges, settling disputes between multiple parties, and decreed punishments
for crimes.
Their position was so sacred that Druids could intervene between two armies and stop a battle
in its tracks.
The circle of druids was ruled by a chief or Archdruid.
They served for life, and a new one would be appointed upon death.
Usually, the new Archdruid would be self-apparent, but if there weren’t one, there’d be a
vote.
Sometimes succession conflicts turned violent, just like any powerful disputed title.
So, what did druids believe in?
As I’m sure you’re sick of hearing by now, we don’t know much.
One of the few things we know is that they believed in a form of reincarnation.
Romans wrote of them as having a “Pythagorean doctrine” and that they thought human souls
after some years began lives in new bodies.
One scholar almost 2,000 years ago named Dio Chrysostom compared them to magi or Brahmins
in India.
Some scholars took this account seriously, and along with the belief in reincarnation
have speculated some sort of connection with Indian religion.
Some think the druidic belief in reincarnation is the result of Buddhist missionaries who
went to Europe under the command of King Ashoka, or that they share some sort of Indo-European
religious heritage with Hindus and Buddhists.
We might not know a ton about their beliefs, but we do know a tad about their religious
rituals from second-hand sources.
Druidic rituals used to take place in forest clearings, but after the Romans arrived in
France and Britain, they began to move their rituals to special sacred buildings.
One important plant to the druids seems to be mistletoe.
A writer named Pliny the Elder around 2,000 years ago noted the importance of using mistletoe
on the 5th day of the moon.
Ever wonder where the Christmas mistletoe comes from?
You got your origin right here.
They would drink a tea made from the mistletoe, believing that it would help with fertility,
and as an antidote for poison.
Oh yeah, they measured all their time with the cycles of the moon.
The moon shows up a lot in several cultures’ mythology.
This is not just because it’s regular, but because the moon has real, tangible effects
on the world around us.
I made this video with Sheryl, the Roving Naturalist, and she discusses how important
the moon is to nature in this video here.
There was also a lot of sacrifice in Celtic culture.
They seemed to like sacrificing bulls specifically.
However, the Romans wrote a lot about, you guessed it, human sacrifice.
This is a difficult topic to breach, as human sacrifice from second-hand sources, especially
hostile second-hand sources always raises a red flag.
Whether the druids actually committed human sacrifice, or just oversaw it is still a lingering
question, as well as how common a practice it really was.
And human sacrifice was not an unknown phenomenon in Celtic society.
They usually sacrificed criminals, but weren’t above using innocent people if there were
no criminals were around.
The sacred methods of execution were traditionally called the threefold death.
This was drowning, hanging, or burning the victims.
Different gods required different ways of sacrifice.
The most iconic would be when the victim would be stuffed inside a giant wooden effigy and
set on fire, typically called the wicker man.
The land of the druids came under assault by the Romans.
After the Roman invasion of Gaul, emperors beginning with Tiberius and Claudius ordered
the suppression of the druids.
By the second century, no more written records of the druids turn up.
However, they still existed in Ireland, and in some parts of Wales.
The druids there began to decline when Christianity showed up.
They still hung on in one form or another, especially in Ireland, until about the eighth
century CE, but by then were mere shadows of their former selves.
They were seen as creators of love potions, and casters of spells, but their role in society
had long faded away.
So why does so little survive?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, they held oral traditions sacred.
Even though Celts and Druids had writing, they forbid the copying down of their teachings.
After the druids disappeared, all their collected information went with them.
The druids continued to exist in the vibrant realm of Irish folklore.
In many stories of Irish lords and kings, druids are advisors and priests with the ability
to cast spells, and most notably perform divination and tell prophecies.
Because so few information about the druids survives, they became wrapped in mystery.
All the surviving text about them is second-hand, and that makes it very hard for historians
to parse myth from reality.
The Roman invasion resulted in a wave of first-century anti-druid propaganda, which muddies understanding
of this class of people.
Because of this, one of the most cited and large sources on the druids comes from the
writings of Julius Caesar.
Like, the actual Julius Caesar.
He was the Roman general who conquered Gaul and writes a lot about the druids in the 50s
and 40s BCE.
To this day, historians debate over how authentic and useful these accounts are.
There are also some writing on druids from the stories of saints in Ireland and Wales.
The story of the famous Saint Patrick, a missionary in Ireland in about the 5th century, features
Druids.
The story of Saint Patrick celebrates victories over the Druids’ influence on Irish Kings.
Most of this, as with a lot Christian medieval writing is primarily made up and taken from
stories in the bible, but there is significant evidence to say that druids were around in
the time of St. Patrick.
The druids then disappeared for nearly a thousand years.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a renewed interest in Druids in England and
Wales.
They began to show up in pop culture like the elves as part of the romantic movement.
Books like the 1809 Les Martyrs told the story of a druid princess and a Roman soldier.
They also featured in many operas in the early 1800s.
These druids were a strange amalgamation of a few scraps of real information about Druids,
and a great deal of myth and imagination.
One thing imagined was that Stonehenge and other megaliths in Britain were built by druids.
The problem here is that Stonehenge is between 4 and 5 thousand years old and the oldest
writing about the Druids is merely 2,400 years old.
We have no evidence to suggest druids were around that far back in the past.
Lastly, there was a Celtic revival in the 18th and 19th century, that inspired a group
of neopagans who wanted to revive the druids.
They exist to this day, sometimes performing midsummer rituals at Stonehenge.
Scholars point out that next to nothing of the druidic ways survives today, and that
the neo-druids are a complete reinvention, with little historical grounding, and nearly
a millennium separating them from the druids of the past.
However, this myth is what made it into our RPGs.
It’s not a long leap of the imagination to fill in the mysteries of the priests who
met in the forest to exchange secret knowledge, and magic, shapeshifting, and communing with
nature.
They’re a pretty cool and mysterious class of people, and even if what we see in our
fantasy games and literature bears little resemblance to them, it just means there’s
a large blank canvas for our imaginations to paint with.
I want to remind you all that this video was a collaboration with Sheryl, the Roving Naturalist.
She’s a working biologist who talks about the natural world.
Often by going out on hiking trails and showing it to you herself.
Since fantasy druids often feature the moon, she made a complementary video to this one
about moon phases, and how the moon affects nature.
You should really give it a look.
So, what fantasy figure should I do next?
There’s a comment section you can use to let me know, so have at it!
This video was made possible by these wonderful people, as well as the rest of my Patrons
over at Patreon.
I’d especially like to thank Don and Kerry Johnson as well as Kolbeinn Mani for their
generosity.
It seems we’ve passed another…
TWO stretch goals, so expect the video on the fasces and on Israel in the next couple
months.
Also, the next stretch goal for $225 a month will be a brief history of modern Iran.
The theme song is by 12Tone and come back next time for more Step Back.