In the Iron Age and into the mists of pre-history, the Druids were the spiritual and intellectual class of the Celtic-speaking tribes which inhabited much of Northern Europe, from Anatolia to Ireland and Iberia. Druidry or Druidism is a modern term used to describe the beliefs and practices of Druids and their followers. The ancient Romans and Greeks regarded the Druids as philosophers and priests, using their own cultural terms. Today, students of the Druids sometimes compare them to the shamans of other non-literate tribal cultures.
Druidry, as an institution was apparently destroyed by the Romans and the subsequent Romanization and Christianization of British and Gaulish tribes. It survived longest apart from these influences in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales and scholars continue to debate how much of its lore and ritual might have been passed on in Christianized forms through folklore and festival, or through the practices of witches and cunning folk on the margins of official society. Generally, it is fair to say that by the Middle Ages, Druidry was no longer a part of the social order and the wizards who had once advised kings had passed into the realm of myth represented most notably by the figure of Merlin in the Arthurian Romances.
Bards, Ovates, and Druids
Traditionally, Druidry is structured into three grades or orders, the Bard, Ovate, and Druid. These are not strictly hierarchical, although it seems that in ancient times the members of the Druid grade were accorded particular respect and authority over matters of law, lore, and state. Each of the grades or orders of Druidry carries its own particular special focus. Some modern Druidic organizations do not use the three grades, and in common discussion of Druidry as a Neopagan religion or philosophy, the term "druid" is often used to describe anyone who has elected to take up Druidry as a personal quest.
The term "bard" comes from the ancient Cymraeg term for poet spelled bardd. In Irish Gaeilge they were called filidh. In ancient and medieval times bards where responsible for singing the history of the people. Bards were musicians and poets, but also historians of a sort, pledged to the preservation of their culture. They sang the laws and the heroic tales of the people. They praised worthy kings and lords by recounting their genealogies, often traced back to heroes and gods. When leaders were evil or selfish, the satires of the poets brought down ridicule and a loss of face that even the most powerful feared.
As a consequence, the bards were highly respected and when they traveled around the country from village to town to castle, they were received with high honors and given many gifts in exchange for the service they performed. It was customary in ancient Ireland, for bards to be paid in cows and horses, the measure of wealth in that agrarian society. The bardic poets are often associated with medieval troubadours and minstrels, or court poets supported by noble lords and ladies. To the bards is attributed the survival of the "Matter of Britain" which evolved through the troubadours of France and Brittany into the Arthurian Romances. This same tradition, with its roots in Welsh and Irish myths, has been endowed with a mystic or esoteric dimension by modern writers. The very term "bard" seems to impart a kind of supernatural power of enchantment, eloquence, and magic, which is perhaps why it is used as an honorific for "The Bard" William Shakespeare.
Today, in a Western culture that respects and reveres engineers more highly than poets, we can easily underestimate the importance of bards in Celtic societies. It is thought that the bards were one of three grades within the community of the Druids, those wise men of the oak groves who were for the ancient Celts healers, judges, and priests. The Druids were the leaders of society, revered for their long education, and it seems logical that the bards were the first, most fundamental grade in the Druid orders. Educated for as much as twenty years, the bards memorized vast numbers of poems and learned to compose and extemporize in hundreds of verse forms and rhyme schemes that were traditional in the Irish and Welsh tongues. They learned of the interconnection among all things and the importance of the cycles of the seasons and of birth and rebirth. Cycles of human life and song cycles proclaimed the wonder, glory, and beauty of the natural world and the culture heroes of the Celts.
The higher grades in the Druid order -- the Ovates and the Druids, as they were named -- carried the student on into the lore of law and proper behavior, and right reverence towards all things. These scholars studied methods of prophesy, divination, and sacrifice, which they performed in their sacred groves. Animals and trees were, for the Druids, sacred and holy beings to be respected for their age and wisdom and their deep knowledge of earth, water, and stone. Spirits lived in the trees as they lived in men and women, and indeed in all things. Sun, moon, stars, and the very cycles of time were linked in a spiritual, astral dimension of coordinated interdependence.
Modern scholars of the Druids long believed that the tradition died out, even though there are surviving references to bards as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But whatever the truth may be about the institutional dimension of druidry, and the bardic tradition, it is certain that in the late eighteenth century the rediscovery of these old, pre-Christian teachings captivated the imaginations of many. Poets of the Romantic Movement in particular fancied themselves to be the inheritors of the old mantle of the ancient bards, a calling to poetry that bordered on the holy. They were to be prophets, calling out to their nations to return to the old ways of unity with nature. It is not surprising that the resurgence of druidry should occur at the same time as the emergence of the Industrial Revolution that so altered the landscape of Britain.
During the Druid Renaissance of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, new orders of that philosophy were founded in an attempt to recapture the ancient British and Gaelic spiritual heritage that had been so thoroughly wiped out first by the Romans and later by the Christians. It was during this revival that associations were made between the Druids and the many stone circles and standing stones scattered throughout Britain and Europe. The Celts and their prehistoric ancestors produced these monuments, and although the oldest historical references we have to Druids come from the Roman writers of the first century BC, nevertheless, the claim was made that Druidry represented a profoundly ancient philosophy of the same stature as Taoism in China, and perhaps even older. Poets such as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Burns, and James MacPherson (the ostensible rediscoverer of "Ossian") saw themselves as part of the tradition of the poet as visionary and prophet, seeing more deeply into the truth of things than other men. Blake, in particular, sought a poetic style that combined the prophets of the Biblical Judaic tradition with the Druids of Albion.
During the Romantic period, Stonehenge became a symbol of the Druid religion and groups in England and the rest of Britain sought to restore such sacred sites to their supposed original uses as places of ceremony. Later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries theories were advanced that Stonehenge and many other stone alignments and circles were in fact complex solar and lunar observatories. Their purpose, it was suggested, was to predict and mark the precise moments of sun and moonrise on the principal quadrants of the calendar: the equinoxes and solstices. Such interpretations of the stone rings are nowadays almost taken for granted, so powerful is that interpretation, and as a result the Druids have joined many other ancient cultures, such as the Mayans and the Babylonians, in their possession of highly advanced astronomical knowledge. Equally impressive are the mathematical and engineering knowledge required to construct megalithic structures such as Stonehenge.
The end result for us today is the perception that northern Europe and the Celts did possess a highly refined culture, both in terms of science and scholarship, and in terms of the arts. The Celts and Germanic tribes reviled by our Classical Roman authors as "barbarians" were, it seems something much more complex. It is intriguing that this realization comes during the same historical period when anthropologists have discovered that so-called "primitive" societies throughout the world are in fact highly complex and possess arts, mythologies, and knowledge of healing that rival those of the "developed" West.
There are several major Druid orders in Britain, among which are the British Druid Order (BDO) and the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD). There are also orders and groves established in France, especially in Celtic Brittany, and one will find solitary Druids and unaffiliated groves throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the United States the old fraternal Druid orders were introduced on new soil by immigrants. However, the more influential Druidic movement in America began in the 1960's with a college club called the Reformed Druids of North America. Begun half jokingly, this new religion espoused no tenets other than a reverence for Nature and respect for individual spiritual exploration. From the RDNA branched off Ar n'Draiocht Féin (ADF) which established itself as a distinctly Neopagan religious organization modelled on the polytheism and practices of the ancient Druids. Some modern druids consider themselves to be Neopagans, and some pursue Druidry as a nature philosophy that is compatible with other religions. It is a particular hallmark of modern Druidry that druids tolerate each others differences in beliefs and practices and even welcome variety.
Further Reading
For more information on Druidry, please consult the following resources:
Article: "Celtic Druidism" from Religioustolerance.org
Article: "Druid" from Wikipedia
Article: "Neo-druidism" from Wikipedia
Order of Bards Ovates and Druids
The Druid Network
Ar n'Draiocht Féin
Order of Whiteoak
Druidbooks Bibliography
Druidry