by Megli
Modern Druids have become more aware over recent years that how we imagine our ancient counterparts is determined by culture circumstances, shifting fashion, and present need. The ancient sources are small in number and infuriatingly enigmatic. Each one needs to be assessed in its own context. Ronald Hutton has shown eloquently that the people of particular eras have selectively drawn on different strands of these ancient sources, creating over five centuries a contradictory series of imaginary personae for the ancient Druids. As he describes it, we have Wise Druids, Green Druids, Patriotic Druids, and Demonic Druids. (See R. Hutton, 'The Druids: A History' (London, 2007)).
This last image draws most on those ancient sources which report human sacrifice as a Druidic custom, to visualise Druids as blood-soaked and barbarous priests perpetuating a reign of monstrous superstition. (Apparently the Victorians kept introducing the obligatory nubile maidens into this scenario..!)
The actual historical sources are, as usual, unhelpful. Several Greek and Roman authors (Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Lucan) unequivocally ascribe the custom of human sacrifice to the Druids of Gaul, often connecting it with a gruesome method of divinations from the victims death-throes. Tacitus mentions human-sacrifice in connection with the Druids of the woodlands of Anglesey. The lost writings of the Greek Posidonius may be the source for the famous wicker-man sacrifice described both by Strabo and by Caesar. These descriptions may have a basis in fact, individually greater or lesser, or they may simply be lurid propaganda. We just cant know.
The Irish and Welsh medieval sources, of limited help at the best of times, are of no help at all on this issue. Archaeology is more use: there are a number of preserved corpses from Celtic Europe, Britain, and Ireland, plus some from what is now Denmark, some of which may be human sacrifices. (Or judicial executions. Or kinslayings. Or murders by robbers. Or accidents. The route of each one to their watery deaths may have been different.) Even the most likely candidate for a ritual killing, the bog-body known as Lindow Man, found in Cheshire, has been re-assessed; he may not be a sacrifice after all. Then again, he yet may. However, none of this proves the Druids were involved, though as the ritual and religious specialists of the Celtic peoples of North-West Europe (one of the few things we can say about them), it would seem probable. As yet there is no consensus amongst researchers and archaeologists. (For a discussion of the bog-bodies issue, see the chapter The Demonic Druids in Hutton.)
We know of numerous foundation burials of animals in Iron Age and Romano-British sites, and we also know of the propensity of Celtic warriors for head-hunting. Given the suggestive but hardly conclusive evidence of the Classical sources and archaeology, the best we can say in answer to the question Did the ancient Druids practice human sacrifice? is a perhaps, verging towards probably, in some communities, at some times, under quite unknown circumstances.
In this, it is well to remind ourselves that they would have been nothing unusual amongst pre-Christian religious functionaries; occasional human sacrifice is recorded the world over. We have little reason to think the ancient Druids were of necessity any better. They lived in a brutal and violent world. On the one hand, they are most unlikely to have been like the Aztecs, grotesquely slaughtering countless thousands in a psychotic religious craze. But on the other hand, they are no more likely to have resembled the improbable portrait Philip Carr-Gomm suggests in The Elements of Druidry, with the Druid not as sacrificial priest, but acting rather like a Christian minister at a judicial execution, sorrowfully comforting the condemned victim whilst lamenting the actions of the state.
It is a truism about modern Druidry that we are inspired by our own multifarious cultural images of the Druids, rather than by any direct knowledge of them as they were. That historical information is sadly just not available to us in reliable form. We can continue to be inspired by the rich range of imaginative historical responses to the figure of the ancient Druid; there is nothing wrong with that, as long as we are conscious that that is what we are doing.
But in turn, there is no need for us to identify so intensely with this mysterious class of people that we must defend them from any charge that implies they were not a right-on combination of Gandalf, Gandhi, and Black Elk. As this is so, what does it matter if the ancient Druids performed human sacrifice?
It's not as if we are about to start
