The Druids in Early Ireland and Gaul

In his book The Druids, Stuart Piggett uses archaeological and literary evidence to try to explain who the Druids were and what roles they fulfilled in pre-Roman and Romano-Celtic Europe. The Druids clearly had a religious function, although it is debated what exactly, and it is probable they were not unlike the Christian monks that were to take over their lands in the centuries to come. This is shown by the remains of temples and shrines, contemporary Greek and Roman writers and the strong oral tradition in isolated areas uncontaminated by the modern world long enough to be written down in the early Medieval period.

It is much debated whether or not the Druids filled the same positions as modern-day priests, therefore scholars are hesitant to refer to them as "Celtic priests," but in many ways this is exactly what they were. To the Druids the Celtic peoples entrusted their theology, philosophy, system of law, and ritual leadership. It is difficult to know exactly what the Druids did based on the archaeology and even the accounts of contemporaries such as Julius Caesar and Posidonius alone; however, with the combination of the two, a picture begins to emerge. Monks throughout the centuries have had several significant unifying features, as the monastic life was based on the principal of devoting their entire existance to their religion, including all possessions, actions, beliefs and philosophies. In other words, their bodies, hearts, minds and souls were devoted to this one cause. It is not difficult to see how the Druids could have taken similar vows. Within the archaeological record, the majority of the artifacts found were religious and ceremonial in nature, and in religious contexts. For example the ritual burial shafts in which pieces of human and animal bone, ceremonial cypress trees, iron and wooden figurines, and unbroken vessels of clay pottery were found. In the "temples" and religious buildings near or surrounding these shafts, there were no personal items recorded, leading one to believe the space was entirely sacred and for religious events only, or the occupants had little or no personal items.

Like the later Christian monks of Ireland, the Druids came from the ruling class, often siblings of high chieftains, and acting as advisors to their "kings." They were spiritual leaders as well as military advisors, holding power in times of war and peace. In the Irish literary sources, transcribed from the vernacular oral tradition in the fourth and fifth centuries, there is a hierarchy within the religious class, the name "Druid" reserved for the highest positions of power and respect, above other bards, seers, magicians, diviners and the like which could be put into the same category of elite non-warrior class. The Irish Ulster epics, however, are given little authority or validity because they are from a first-hand perspective, and not from the civilized distance of the Greco-Roman invaders, even though they were not modified by the Christian scribes.

The Druids were concerned with the natural world, and people's roles in it; their philosophy and theology were inextricably tied together through the world around them. They performed rituals Christians would call "magic," using materials from the deep oak woods native to their lands and held that human souls were immortal. Other than that very little of the theology or philosophy of the Druids survives today. It is known what materials they used in these rituals, including human sacrifice, but how they were regarded and used is not as clear.

According to Julius Caesar who was in Gaul on a political campain to take over their land, the Druids had one leader to whom all the others were subordinate, and, also not unlike an abbot of a Benedictine monastery, he kept this position until death, when a successor was voted as the most honorable and respected, a position sometimes contested for in arms. Also from Caesar we learn that the primary place ofworship was not in the boundaries of the villages, but out in the woods, and there were no formal buildings or temples like the Romans were used to.

The training of novitiates, according to various sources, consisted of a large number of young men going off into the woods or caves for instruction over a period of 20 years, where they learned large ammounts of what Roman observers called "poetry." This is obviously very similar to the practice of Christian monks, although the monks vows were to live in the monastic life until death. While both religious orders were responsible for the preservation of the "academia" of their cultures, the Druids instructed orally, and had no written system, other than ogam and later Greek characters, which were used only in special occasions, not for everyday recording of knowledge. Oral transmission of cultural memories of the ancients, as well as stories, and magical craft could easily be translated into the literate, Christian adaptations of the Bible, teachings of the masters, and the Rule.

A key point of departure from the similarities to monks is the Druids' role in the judicial system of the Celts. They had jurisdiction over public and private matters, murder cases (not at all to be confused with sacrificial killings) and excommunication from tribes or ceremonies or ritual cursing if their ruling was disobeyed. Monks also had slightly judicial roles but not to the nature and extent of the Druids. The primary rituals that have been observed and described are those involving human and animal sacrifice. It is not made clear why these are the only ones mentioned multiple times; perhaps because the only observers were members of a people with whom the Celts were at war, and the sacrificial rites were allowed to be observed to instill fear in the Romans. Or perhaps sacrifice was the least sacred, or least secret, and therefore the only ritual that outsiders were allowed to attend. Pliny is the only historian to observe any other rituals, one being the mistletoe gathering on the sixth day of the moon, involving the sacrifice of two white bulls. He also mentions other private rituals involving the harvesting of certain herbs with specific requirements for dress, what hand was used and the like.

Human sacrifice is the most widely talked about role of the Druids, probably because to modern society it is the most horrifying, barbaric action we can think of, and it becomes fascinating because it is so immensely taboo. It was performed in a variety of ways, from bows and arrows and knives to holocaust in giant wicker frames (a ritual still reflected today in the British celebration of Guy Fawkes Day). The Druids' presence at these rites was required, however, they often did not carry out the actual deed of killing the vicims. It can be theorized however, that the Druids served in a much more spiritual function at these rites, the nature of which Christian thinkers can only speculate upon.

Speculate they do. The Christian world divides the Druids knowledge into two varieties: metaphysical and practical; the metaphysical dealing with the supernatural realm of magic and Sight, ritual and theological, the practical meaning the preservation of knowledge, calendars, crops and such. The Greco-Roman invaders and visitors tell us that the Druids believed in human imorality, were philosophers and theologians, and could communicate with the gods, all of which appear as abstract esoteric nonsense to modern Christo-centric scholars, and are entirely separate from the Druids roles as historians, scholars, and scientists of nature and the universe. According to Diodorius and others, the immortal souls of the Celts passed from one body at the time of death, into an immaterial world identical with the one it had left, not unlike the Christian concept of heaven. The classical contemporaries of the Celts were so confused by this concept they put it into terms they could understand. They decided the Druids were followers of Pythagoras, who preached the somewhat similar theory that human souls could inhabit all living things,however, this was not at all accurate in association nor philosophy.

As far as practical knowledge of the Druid Celts, scholars are impressed by their knowledge of astronomy and other forms of natural science. They counted time in terms of nights and moons, using the stars for reference and knowledge of the world, as well as prediction-making, or what is known as astrology. The Coligny Calendar found in France shows the way time was broken into 62 months with roman lettering of the Gaulish language, lucky and unlucky days-- rather, nights-- marked. The usage of lunar and solar years are compensated for by the insertion of another month every two and a half and three years, alternating. The calendar is different from other contemporary systems of time-keeping, but shows Greek influences.

Thus it is easy to draw parallels with the Christian monks that later inhabited the same lands and took on many of the characteristics of the Celtic culture that were derived from Druidic institutions. It is not a strict parallel, but rather a loose affiliation and influence of one religious order with another. The Druids accepted Christianity as a valid form of worship as did the Christians, at least long enough to borrow some ideas and philosophies, and for them to take root and become widespread. Among them were the ideas of heaven as a place where one maintains one's worldly persona, purgatory as a place between this world and the next, prayers for specific things as evolved from cursing, the submission of the human form to the will as the Celts cared nothing for their human bodies which would live on elsewhere, and others. The Druids were a fascinating group, one which has enjoyed much rejuvination in the past years as people return to the ideas of harmoy with nature and pagan philosophies in the ecological movements around the world. A renewed interest has arisen, along with the knowledge that we have a lot to learn from our long gone ancestors.