Casual discussion about druidism

[WhiteMan]

It’s always funny when someone tries to deny you your religion.

Druid doesn’t have to be a priest any more than every Christian is a priest. A Druid is one of millions of Celtic people who follow one of the many branches of Druidism, the religion.

A Druid is a common person of Druidism, just as a Christian is a common person of Christianity. One should not confuse the religious adherents with the priests of any religion.

According to the foremost scholar on the Celtics, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the Celtics and Druids (adherents of Druidism, their main religion), originated at 10,000 BC on the Atlantic Coast of Europe. Many scientists now back this. There has been little to none longitudinal transmission of the Celtic genetic marker M269.

Some actual facts: Busby GB, Brisighelli F, Sánchez-Diz P et al: The peopling of Europe and the cautionary tale of Y chromosome lineage R-M269. Proc Biol Sci 2012; 279: 884–892
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.1044

[WhiteMan]

Druidism is a religion based on Celtic Brehon Law, regarded as one of the oldest law codes in Europe.

It is common for the Marxists to try to say Druids didn’t come from Celtic lands of the Atlantic coast of Europe and instead “from India”. Which is mainstream media and hilarious.

I love someone coming into Druidism forum here and saying it is not a faith or belief system. Lol.

[Anonymous]

Well I’m mostly starting the conversation to spark some action in this group, that has been dead for months, but also to use the instance to straighten some facts.
For starters, druidism is not a faith or a belief system, its a social caste/profession, that according to many sources was equivalent to the Flamen, Augurs and Haruspices of Rome, and the different priestly classes/castes in other cultures, going as far as Brahmins in Aryan India.
Their class concentrated almost all of the oral tradition of their peoples, and the right to perform greater rites and divination. Its stated in some places that druids would require at least 20 years of intense memory training to learn all their oral traditions, plus all the philosophy of the Celtic/Teutonic traditions, some people even theorizing they handled concepts similar to the Pythagoreans and Hermetic circles. The means by which they achieved all their metaphysical feats remains obscure, as they were a deeply esoteric group, and the prosecution they faced later on by the christian church exacerbated this tendency. Occult as they were, and seeing how the Pythagoreans and Hermeticists did later, it wouldn’t be that far-fetched to assume they never really disappear, but rather went undercover, keeping tightly closed circles that are alive even today.
Reading about Indo-European mythologies its easy to see the cognates and equivalences, even when the exoteric forms vary to a great degree. The esoteric meanings and the symbolic truths were the vehicle for the truly important messages, and the metaphysical philosophies contained within are essentially the same. The term Druid is most often heard of in Celtic culture, but it would be adequate to call the priestly caste of any Indo-European derivate as such, from the Celtic/Gaulish/Teutonic point of view.
The nature of the rituals they performed comprised the greatest rituals, mostly related to the gods and the seasons, while familiar and purely social rituals would most often be officiated by the head of the family, or the chieftain.
About oral tradition, they shared this field with Bards, who were travelling poets, that would often spend long seasons under the employment of a host. Bards were respected and feared, because they could curse with their Satires, and hospitality – a religious duty on most of ancient Europe – was given special emphasis for them. Druids probably received a similar treatment.
It’s also important to remember that the “exoteric” or visible face of druidism went through a decadent state later on, when widespread superstition turned druids (probably those that hadn’t undergone full training, or straight up posers) into mere “spiritual” mercenaries, that demanded payment for officiating rituals, divining the future and such.

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