Honourable companions,
In the time of the ancient Celts, it was a right and priveledge of Druids
to stand by the king as a trusted and carefull councillor, for all public
and judicial matters. The ancient Druids were judges and philosophers in
their own right as well, and this historical fact is well documented by
foreign historians as well as by our own law texts from the early
Christian period. Ancient Druids of Gaul assembled once a year, to give
judgement on all matters brought before them, and so important was this
annual assembly that a sacred place was chosen that was the center of the
province, and a chief was selected from among them to co-ordinate the
event.* But in this time and age, Druids serve their tribe's leaders as
advisors no longer, nor are we the bringers of fair justice and truth for
all our tribe's public and private disputes anymore. Moreover the tribes
are divided and scattered, and no longer acclaim one of the warriors to be
their chief, as was done in ancient times. Therefore I address the
question of what role in society are contemporary Druids to make for
themselves.
First it is clear to me that if the Druids are to make a place for
themselves in society at all, it will not be within the main body of
contemporary western society that such a place will be found. For though
the Druid remains an archetype of respect in the imagination of the people
of today, nevertheless the leaders of today, whom we call politicians and
financiers instead of kings and lords, will look to learned professionals
called lawyers, economists, academics, strategists, doctors, and
consultants, for needful council, instead of to Druids. If a Druid of
today were to offer her service to the Prime Minister of my country one
may safely speculate that she would be laughed at and dismissed. For
Druids are no longer an institution; they are a figure of myth, and they
are looked upon with the sort of wistful nostalgia that one feels when
contemplating a lost paradise.
Yet within the cities and cultures of these industrialised nations are the
communities of people who have built a religion and a subculture of their
own from examining the ancient ways, and the Earth, and their own minds.
These people are the Pagans, and it is this subculture that has given
emergence to today's Druids. Pagans are intent upon reviving, and living
in terms of, a spiritual relationship with the ancient powers of the whole
Earth, as are today's Druids, therefore it is with them that Druids will
find a more welcome home than anywhere else.
But there too, Druids might not be welcomed as leaders nor as advisors to
leaders, for the Pagan community of today is decentralised and resists
leaders. Pagans are so frequently the victims of stereotype and hatred
from the other religions, where structures of authority seem to promote
those kinds of hurtful sentiments, that our community resists acclaiming
leaders. So resistant are Pagans to authority that even those who
undertake initiatives of organisation, even when the most altruistic and
constructive intentions are in mind, will be criticised for egotism and
dogmatism. So resistant are Pagans to authority that there are times when
genuine wisdom goes unrecognised and disrespected. I find in the Pagan
community a people who love and respect the Old Ways but who have no
elders.
But unlike the contemporary Pagan community, the ancient Celtic community
did admit authorities and was carefully stratified. The ancient laws are
well documented* and the caste structure of their society has been
persuasively demonstrated. There were three most visible castes in Celtic
society, defined by economic and political priveledge (that is, the place
in which 'society' puts people) yet also by specialised contribution to
the tribe (that is, the work that people select themselves to do). I
summarise them here: the caste of Druids, the caste of Warriors, and the
caste of Workers or Craftsmen.
Today's Pagans cannot make an accurate reproduction of ancient european
society and spirituality for many reasons. I present a few: we are
marginalised; we have greater technological power than ancient people, and
we must account for it; we have different social and private values that
lead us to abhor some of the religious customs of our ancestors*. But let
us not be disheartened by this. If we emphasize accurate reproduction of
ancient life then we will become entertaining anachronisms but not
spiritually informed beings. Good and learned friends, It is not for
living as the ancestors lived, but it is for doing as the ancestors did,
that we best revive the ancient spirituality, and can justly call
ourselves Druids. Today I give an accounting of how contemporary Druids
might do as the ancients did.
The Path and The Way
A spiritual path is a set of concepts and beliefs about profound matters,
which inform a person's life with unified meaning, thereby situating the
person's life in relationship and connexion to said profound matters. I
offer an explanation of this definition here: "profound matters" are
matters that are universal, eternal, or ultimate in nature, that we
encounter in our lives everywhere and at all times, and the knowledge of
them can be properly called wisdom. These matters can include matters of
reality, nature, knowledge, duty, happiness, spirit, purpose & destiny;
these are the mysteries that philosophers have scratched their heads about
for millenia. "Inform" means to put into shape; "a person's life" is a
person's actions, perceptions, and consciousness, which is to say all that
a person can see, do, and think; and "unified meaning" is the matter of
purpose and nonrandom necessity systematically enclosing all being.
I offer the community a new triad. Three processes that become the Triad
of Being: action, perception, consciousness. The Triad of Being encloses
all that a person does, all that a person experiences, and all that a
person thinks and feels. This is my speculative geography of the soul.
It is vastly different from the usual way of understanding a life form
given in Paganism, which is a triad of body, mind, and spirit (although
perceptive readers may note the apparent similarity). The Triad of Being
that I have proposed is descriptive of phenomena and processes, not of
substances; they are events in time and not things in space; they bypass
the problem of mind/body substance dualism because they are not distinct
substances; they are in perpetual motion, whereas the usual triad of body
& mind & soul may remain stationary. A spiritual path puts a person's
Triad of Being into final form, by showing how action, perception, and
consciousness connect with other similar events beyond the localised place
and time, and hence become spiritual.
The Way is the set of moral principles derived or implied by the Path. It
is obtained in a move from claims about profound matters like purpose and
destiny, to claims about what actions, perceptions, and thoughts best
support and promote that stated purpose and destiny. The Way is the moral
principles that rectify a person's being into more complete and harmonic
expression of the profound matters. It is the Path made manifest by a
person's Triad of Being.
The Druid
I submit that the three fold caste system, when defined by specialised
contribution and service to society, is an excellent way for contemporary
Pagans interested in the Old Celtic Ways to organise themselves, because
each of these castes can represent for us a spiritual path. Those who
choose the path of the wise Druid must look to what the social functions
of the ancient Druids were, and select which among them she deems are
still relevant and necessary, and also within her capeabilities. It is
the same for those who choose the path of the brave Warrior, and the
skilled Craftsman.
I declare the path: The Druid is the professional invigilator of living
spiritual mysteries as expressed by Celtic cultural forms. This is the
most precise and yet fully encompassing definition of a Druid that I can
concieve of at this time. It is utterly unlike any other definition I've
ever seen because it doesn't employ vague metaphor, but uses analysable
language, and also because it doesn't harken back to an exclusive claim
about history. But even so, perhaps it deserves further elabouration.
"professional": because being a Druid is a responsibility for one's tribe,
not only for one's own self. Being a professional means having a skilled
capacity that not everyone has yet everyone needs; it is the investment in
you by your tribe, so that you could aquire that skilled capacity, that
grounds you in responsibility to that tribe. Being a Druid requires one
to be accessible and available to people whose scope of spiritual vision
is not as wide Among the responsibilities to such people is to aid them to
widen their scope of vision. Being a Druid is even a responsibility to
the world itself, for as the ancient Druids said, "we created the world",
and without Druids to bring about the renewal of the seasons with their
rituals, the world might end.
So goes the myths. But even contemporary Druids have responsibilities
to the world for our Earth is dying. She is being poisoned by the
excrement of human industry.
"invigilator": a word encompassing a range of ideas, including steward,
investigator, watcher, even 'knower'. An invigilator is a person who
keeps a vigil, which means being watchful and mindful and attentive over
something. And so to say that a Druid is an invigilator is to say that a
Druid is watchful and mindful of something.
"living": to emphasise that the spiritual mysteries are real and
accessible, and not locked in an unknowable, unreachable heavan but
manifest and realised in our embodied world.
"spiritual mysteries": Universal principles of animation that emerge from
all environmental life*. Spiritual mysteries are profound matters, for
they exist everywhere and always, and are knowable by everyone. Any
magical person in any spiritual path can thought of as a professional
invigilator. There needs to be something more saying that there is a
particularly Druidic way of knowing them. Hence, there is one more part
to the definition to follow.
"as expressed by Celtic cultural forms": This is the culturally specific
content of my definition, so to include poetry, art, archaeology,
architecture, literature, mythology, language, and folklore, and so to
require Druids to have excellent working knowledge of many of these
features of Celtic culture. This is also a strictly epistemic issue, for
it touches on ways of knowing about things, which is different from the
issue of what things essentially are (which is an issue of metaphysics).
The Sacred Truth
Many are the mysteries that the magical sight of the Druid can reveal. I
draw your attention to one in particular, and that is the mystery of the
Sacred Truth. A skilled and wise Druid can introduce change into the
world by a clear expression of Truth. The Sacred Truth is the Druid
mystery that apparently elevates a social principle of justice to the
level of universal law.
To people in this day and age, truth is a matter of factual correctness,
and as such it is a property of sentences. If I say that a grand river
flows through the village where I was a lad, this sentence would be
factually correct but it is not an expression of Sacred Truth. Without
going into a long debate on the precise linguistic of the matter, I must
point out that in the old Irish tounge, which is the language in which
Morann gave his Testament, the word for Truth and for Justice is the
same.* This indicates that to the ancient Irish Celts, and the ancient
Druids who were with them, the concepts of Truth and Justice were one. To
the ancient Druids it was a binding and organising principle of nature.
Consider the words of Morann, the Druid who instructed King Feradach Find
Fechtnach:
Let [the king] magnify Truth, it will magnify him
Let him strengthen Truth, it will strengthen him
Let him guard Truth, it will guard him
Let him exalt Truth, it will exalt him.*
With these words Morann extends Truth from the level of factual
correctness to the level of universal organising force of nature, a power
that extends to a person treatment alike to how the person treats the
power. (Note the similarity to what Wiccans call the Three-Fold Law.)
Consider also the stories in the source mythologies by which an expression
of Truth became the magical catalyst by which the world was rectified.
Pwyll's command to the slow yet uncatchable rider to "stop in the name of
the one you love best" brought the Goddess Rhiannon to his side.
Amergin's Expression of Truth is in his famous Song, by which he aquired
the land of Ireland for his tribe. When the court at Teamhair began to
slide down the hill because the King within it made an unjust decision,
Cormac Mac Art arrested its fall by speaking the true judgement. In the
story of the same Cormac's life we find treasures like the cup that would
shatter when three falsehoods are told under it and then be repaired when
three truths are told, and the pig that is cooked by the telling of a
truth for each quarter of it. I cite in brief examples only a selection
of the many cases of a magical expression of Truth from a magical person,
be it a hero or a mystic, which rectify the world.
The issue of what Justice was for the ancients, and what it can be for us,
is important and must be investigated more deeply and defined more
precisely than I have done so here. But today I am content simply to
describe it as magical and profound, and not simply social. It is the
"Logos" that Heraclitus speaks of when he wrote "All things happen in
accordance with the Word"*. It is a Mystery in its deepest, most
spiritual sense.
When the Earth responds to a person's expression of Truth, and the world
is thereby rectified, then one can know with certainty that the speaker is
a Druid. Speaking the Sacred Truth is the special activity of the Druid,
who is not a common kind of judge and philosopher, but a spiritual,
magical, otherworldly one. This is because the source of a Druid's power
is not the kings and not the tribe, but the Earth. The Earth who bestows
on a person the power and priveledge to be the truth-speaking justice
bringer for the tribe. It is granted when she is able to announce, with
complete confidence and complete truth, "I am a Wave on the Sea", and the
land on which she stands announces its agreement with its cry of
exultation, as did the Lia Fail* for the ancient Kings.
It is precisely because the Druid has trained and achieved a comprehensive
range of spiritual vision, more so than the average person, that she is
capeable of the magical Expression of Truth, and qualified to obtain
certain social responsibilities. The vision of the Druid penetrates
falsehood and the word of the Druid speaks the truth, and these are powers
society requires of those who are the stewards of justice. It is my
private wish that the Druids of today develop their vision to the greatest
extent possible, with knowledge-extending meditations like the Immramm and
the Three Illuminations*, so that they may become a powerful force for
bringing justice into the world.
Cathbad
Writing from the Grove,
And in the season of the autumn equinox, the year 1999.
*"annual assembly" etc.: see Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar. An annual
assembly was held in the territory of Carnutes, on the site now occupied
by Chartres Cathedral.
*"the ancient laws are documented" ...in texts like the Senchus Mor, and
others, although it is the laws extant shortly after Christianity
dominates the Celtic nations that are recorded. There are good summaries
of these texts available, produced by reputable historians. Also
available are "wisdom texts" such as the Audacht Morainn, which are not
codified law texts but do preserve the principles of social justice and
private morality that ancient Celtic tribal society developed. Regarding
the caste system of ancient indo-european society: most good historians
will discuss it so I need not cite any particular book. For the purposes
of simplicity, this letter omits discussion of out-caste groups like
slaves.
*"some of the religious customs of our ancestors" ...included the killing
of criminals, with religious officials present to sanction the death.
Today some American states continue to punish criminals with death, and
Christian priests are often present. The ancient practice is marginalised
as "sacrifice", whereas the current practice is praised as "judicial
execution". The reality is the exactly the same for the victim.
*"spiritual mysteries": The definition here is as it appears in Ex Nemeton
1. Regular readers of the Ex Nemeton series of letters will note that the
concept of Mystery is a loaded one for me.
*"The word for Truth and Justice is the same." The word is Fi/rinne. I
am using the translation given by Fergus Kelly, in his edition of the
Audacht Morainn, pub. by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976.
*"Let [the king] magnify Truth..." Translated from the Testament of Morann
by Myles Dillon, in his essay "Celt and Hindu", pub. University College,
Dublin, 1973.
*This fragment of Heraclitus' thinking is found in "Against the
Mathematicians" by Sextus Empiricus. "Logos" is the Greek word for
"Word". As a philosophical concept it is also present in the opening line
of St. John's Gospel, who wrote in Greek and not in Hebrew, which reads
"In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the word was with God, and the
same as God..."
*"The Lia Fail" The Stone of Destiny, which was brought to Ireland by the
Gods. The rock cries out when a true and just king stands on it.
*"knowledge-extending meditations": Immramm (spirit flight, lit. "sea
voyage"); Tenm Laida (Illumination by Song); Dichetal Do chennaib
(Cracking the Nuts of Wisdom); and Imbas Forosna (Sudden Inspiration).
