Ancient Expressions of Faith and the Druids
It is well recorded in the archaeological record that before us, Homo sapiens sapiens, Neanderthal people and their predecessors, Homo heidelbergensis, dug graves and placed their dead in them. Bodies were placed in a foetal position, indicating sleep or rebirth. From the pollen and other traces found with the bones, it is likely that armfuls of flowers and sweet herbs were placed in the graves as well, though later scholars have questioned this, as they do. These are indicators of faith, that the departed were not being disposed of for reasons of hygiene, there was respect and a clear idea of more to come.
In the Palaeolithic (early era of stone tool making) there is no doubt that our ancestors highly decorated their dead with rich red ochre, bead necklaces, food, tools and weapons clearly for an afterlife. Small children were laid on swan’s wings for a soft cradle, as though still able to feel.
Our ancient ancestors saw themselves as part of the bionetwork, as animals, equal to and part of all that was around them. They were aware that they were aware. They knew they could alter and influence, through tools, through artifacts, by manipulating things around them.
Cave art depicts not only the hunt and the stalked animals but also figures dressed as the animals, engaged in dance-type movements, using an intangible connection to influence the herds. There were other man-beasts, seemingly spirits of the Otherworld that had connection with not only the food animals, but also the great predators, the bear, the lion, the wolf, the eagle. Also on the cave walls, all over the world, there are abstract shapes. These have been identified as the shapes and images seen by the mind when normal sensation is removed, either under hallucinogens or simply by sitting in silence, in complete darkness, such as a deep cave would offer. Psychologists call this the Ganzfeld effect. The ancients were deliberately trancing.
Today, we call this a ‘shamanic’ faith – entering a state of alternative consciousness, leaving the physical body to merge with the spirit world. Change was the objective, to influence the herds for a successful hunt, to mend sick bodies and sick minds, to be given wisdom and answers when the rains failed to come, when the food plants were sick and the fruits did not come. “Shaman”, from the Siberian Evenki word for “those who know”, was appropriated in the Edwardian era, once holding an implication of contempt for an ‘inferior’ faith, but is now a sociological classification. Respected scholars, such as Professor Graham Harvey, consider the word an appropriation but one we are stuck with as everyone knows what it means.
Communities considered themselves to be joined together, their dead released to the sky in the open, then the bones deposited collectively in long barrows, purpose-built ‘caves’, visited and the bones handled – showing signs of wear. The dead were a communal entity, joined together in death as a great tribe and an accessible mind. (People of the Long Barrows, Martin Smith & Megan Brickley, 2009)
It was the coming of agriculture that began the great rift. No longer hunters, we began to see ourselves as separate from the plant and animal world. Sacred art stopped portraying the therianthropes, the half man, half animal figures. Plants, livestock, the land were seen as possessions, to be used and traded. Whether having many gods or one god, the religious traditions told their followers things like:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” – Christian Bible, 1st book of Genesis, verse 26 (Bronze Age), King James translation, 1611CE.
So people were told to consider themselves god-like, with the power and right of life and death, with separate, man-like creator gods, not of nature but makers of nature, pervading all but ultimately outside all.
Within this new thinking came greater organisation and separation. The shamanic ceremonies became liturgy, the journey-makers became hierarchies of priests, the ordinary people became ‘laity’, unskilled in the liturgy, told what to think rather than join the journey into the Otherworlds.
The sun came to the fore as having power over seasons and crops. In the Neolithic ages (new stone age), monuments marking the passage of the sun, the moon and the seasons were erected. Later, the long barrows were sealed and tombs became singular, each echoing the sun with a half-sphere surrounded by a ditch representing the sun’s corona. Community was still important and the afterlife seen as a resting place that people enjoyed together.
All was not lost, however. Some polytheistic societies still considered their gods to be forces of nature with personality (anima), not man-like. The Iron Age European tribes, usually referred to as “Celts” although that is a very broad brush, were such:
Whilst pillaging Greek shrines and oracles, “Brennus, the king of the Gauls, on entering a temple found no dedications of gold or silver, and when he came only upon images of stone and wood he laughed at them, to think that men, believing that gods have human form, should set up their images in wood and stone.” – Diodorus Siculus, Book XXII 9.2-5 (translation CH Oldfather, 1935)
The holy people of the Gauls were called “Druids” – the term “priest” would not serve them well. The word “Druid” is often translated as “oak-knowers”, but another reading is that oak is strong and reliable – tried and tested – thus ‘true’, so that the Druids were “they that know truth”. The Druids were a class of highly educated people who were exempt from tax and military service, although the legends and classics tell that they were adept with weapons in a violent world. They considered violence wasteful though, riding their chariots between battling tribes, demanding that the factions sheath their weapons, submit their complaints in “Elembivos”, the Claims month, for judgement and reparations in “Edrinios”, the Arbitration month, beginning after the festival of “Lughnasadh”. (Diodorus Siculus, Histories 5, 31; the Coligny calendar; the metrical Dindshenchas)
The Druids were not born into a caste, they applied and were chosen at a young age, studying for up to twenty years. They were taught memory with rapid recall techniques, oral histories, the laws of nature and legal philosophy, as well as practical higher skills such as medical arts, strategy, mediation, adjudication, with, of course, the techniques of communicating with the deities (the spirit world) and interpreting the answers received.
The classics report that Druids taught reincarnation, had the ability to foresee the future, gave council to the highest leaders (at least one addressed the Roman senate). They met with the Brahmins from India, the Greek philosophers and the Zoroastrian Magi. There are well-researched papers suggesting that ideas from Pythagoras, Aristotle and others were brought back and reconciled with home-grown concepts.
Many of the Arthurian legends are survivals of the myths of the ancient gods of Britain and Europe. We still throw coins into fountains and touch trees and wood for divine reassurance. The Druids are still with us.
Links:
What was written about the ancient Druids and the beliefs of the Britons and Gauls by the Romans and Greeks? (Article in preparation – this site)
What was written in the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Northumbrian, and Breton legends?
The Mary Jones Celtic Literature Collective (external site): https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/
How many gods did the Britons, Gauls and other ‘Celtic’ nations worship? What were their names? What did they do?
The ABC of Celtic Gods and Goddesses – A Basic Compendium (this site): https://druidnetwork.org/the-druid-heritage/the-abc-of-celtic-gods-and-goddesses/