I'm giving in to an "urge" today. I don't believe that I'll ever know what "druidism" really was, and suspect that no one will, but the study of what little we have about them gives rise to some thoughts which I find difficult to dismiss. As the title says, this is an unsupportable ramble and thereby not much like most of the posts that manifest here.
As you will understand as you read the ramble, it accidently and awkwardly occurs just after Memorial Day. This requires me, in all honesty, to type a few words about people who go to war. I have nothing against the average GI Joe who serves his/our country as a soldier. One of my commonest charities is the Paralyzed Veterans of America. I do honor their personal commitment to what they have been told is the right thing to do, and admire their courage and sacrifice, even though I wish that none of it were so. I do NOT honor the administrators who make the decisions to kill people. And that group is legion, both "friend" and "enemy". They represent often the worst people in the world. Terrorist leaders are in that number, but we have had our own share of violent almost cavalier politicians.
So, God Bless the courageous little guy, forced by "culture" and programming and sense of duty to give up everything truly important, and The Devil take the others.
As I say, reading the following will make clearer why I felt it necessary to say these things.
So, why Druids?
That's why.
When you read a lot about ancient times, it's possible that you begin to think thoughts like: "what would MY life have been like back then?" When I meditate upon things like the paintings above, I say: horrific. Glad I was born in 20th century America. If body type would have been the same, there is no way I could have escaped the military and the violent attempt to kill lots of people.
Or, WAS there? And with this question I believe that I know why there were druids.
Intelligent people must have existed in every age and most of them had no desire to have various parts of their anatomies sawed off while otherwise wasting everything else in life. {I don't know how women coped in all this, and I apologize to the ladies for composing this essay around what I believe some men did}.
If I had been an intelligent, albeit ignorant, young man in those days, not looking for violence, killing and "brutal theft and glory", but rather fascinated with the creation around me [in fact being who I am today], what could I do?
I could walk away. I could remove myself from the dominions of the Insane Men, and try to live somehow out of their influence. Insane Men. I'm serious about the label. These were the power men, ubiquitous everywhere in these societies; making up excuses for killing their territorial "neighbors" rather than counseling with them, and not thinking at all about cooperating when troubles in one or the other microsociety arose. Problems? Kill your neighbors and take what you want. Even the Old Testament is rife with these non-spiritual atrocities.
But going it alone is very hard --- doubtless much harder then than now, other than it might have been easier to get distance from the Insane Men in a less populated world. A "shaman" or a "healer" might go off to the nearby woods and regularly re-emerge or be visited by members of the Insane Men's society and "make a living" doing so, but the shaman must have something to offer, and that something somehow making him a bit of an untouchable. i.e. too valuable as he is to force him into the military or even wallow at court.
It would be an awfully talented loner to pull that off.
So you go in search of others like yourself. If you're lucky, you hear the rumors of some "odd people" who live apart and are said to have powers the rest of us do not have. They do not fight, and do not covet land, but they "know things". And you find and join that band. {doubtless with a thorough probationary period where you demonstrate what your personality/ heart actually is like}.
If you are in an ancient urbanized area, you might find these individuals in an allied but not state-controlled "temple" or monastery. You might become a Magi, a Yogi, a Lama. The Insane Men who rule your geography tolerate your independence [and refusal to join the military or the servant class] because you have something that you seem to offer them which makes it worth it. That then is the trick: what uniquely do you possess that can't be forcefully stolen?
If you are in the ancient British Isles, or some similar "small villages and baronies-type locale", you might retreat to the forests and "away". Still, the "practical issue" is the same: what do you have to offer the Insane Men?
Finally, here is where the circumstances meld harmoniously to allow a solution to the dilemma of the non-insane man. What he, and the band of brothers that constitute his society have always wanted to do is: 1). Live in Peace; 2). Enjoy Life and the Creation; 3). Explore the World; 4). Learn it's wonders; 5). Strive for answers to the Big Questions.
And that's what they do. --- ALL of them. Yogis, Magi, Lamas, Monks, Druids. They learn. They develop "techniques" and applications. They dream dreams, some of them appealing in strange ways to even the Insane Men.
When I began my studies of the druids with Henry Rowlands' Mona Antiqua Restaurata, an Archaeological Discourse on the Antiquities of the Isle of Anglesey, the Ancient Seat of the Druids {1723}, Rowlands told me something which has rung solidly true through all my subsequent readings, whether of druidism or other "cults" of peace-loving questing men: that was that the druids deliberately isolated themselves from the Insane Men, pursued Peace, intensely studied Nature, set themselves up in three "layers" of activities ["colleges"], and then created a brilliant "service" to lessen the violence of the Insane Men.
What was the service? The druids had plenty to offer once their colleges came somewhat to maturity {calendar-fixing, dreams of a tolerable afterlife [the picture above is a chambered burial site on Angelsey oriented to the Sun], healings, plant knowledge, some materials-working knowledge, and who knows what else, possibly including some psi talents a la the Buddhists}. But that wasn't the brilliant ploy. They offered the Insane Men the members of the third {lowest} college: the "Beirdd" [the other colleges had the names "Offwyr" and "Drudau" --- these are spelled many ways].
These "Bards" were the "historian-singers", the rememberers of "political history". The colleges allowed each Insane Man the services of one Bard/Beirrd. And what was the result? That Beirrd could occasionally stop a war. He did this by "remembering" what had transpire between the two Insane Men or their insane fathers in the past. He sung the Sagas, and included in them were the "understandings" between the families of the two combatants. Doubtless the other militaristic clown's Beirrd was doing the same AND AGREEING. [do we really think that the two "King's Druids" never collaborated to mold a peace?] And many times these recitations did end a dispute, doubtless after some face-saving compromise. The brilliance of the Beirrd concept was the foundation of Diplomacy vs mindless War.
And, a primary rule of all this: the King's Druid was off-limits as to violence by the opposite side.
Don't involve us in your insanity in any way other than trying to stop it.
This strategy kept a region of insulation between the druidical colleges and the realms of violent power. The intelligence non-violent men had succeeded in finding a way to live peaceful explorative lives in a community of like-minded people. As they watched the distressing waste going on "outside", they at least did what they could to mitigate some of it, while preserving their own lives. Buddhists, Lamas, Monks, probably even Pythagoreans, Eleusians, Delphosians et al were doing the same.
It is ironic that what the history books talk about is entirely the actions of the Insane Men. As off-target as that is, I believe that it was a necessary consequence of what people like the druids had to do. To remain uniquely valuable, groups like the druids had to keep their special knowledge from the Insane Men. That meant secrecy. That meant only VERY gradual being let in on the knowledge. And, with groups that did not have their own material fortress, that probably meant no permanently written down [i.e. steal-able] information. The druids solved this by Beirrds and others dedicated to song and recitations.
But without the writings, there is no history to write about later. So, we future persons get the impression that what was really important in the past were the killings of large numbers of people by insane men. How many "inventions" leaked ultimately into greater society from the magi, monks, and druids? What REALLY made the world progress? War or Study?
There is the old legend of the Language of the Birds. The legend says that he who can understand the Language of the Birds receives all Knowledge and Wisdom. In a way, for those times, I believe that this is precisely true. I think that it is true because the Language of the Birds is a metaphor. It is a metaphor for the close attentive study of Nature. Understanding the Language of the Birds, understanding Nature, is the Path taken by the Druids. Here lies Knowledge. Here lies Wisdom. Here lies the understanding of the Cycles of Life and their Harmonies.
Here lies, ultimately, Peace.
The prime deity in the druidical pantheon seems to have been Lugh.
LIGHT. That seems exactly the correct choice.
Till the next time, my friends: LIGHT and Peace.
