The art of healing concerns the application of natural law to the human body and psyche. If the heart, mind or body is out of tune with nature we suffer. The application of natural remedies – with plants, with the four elements, with solar, lunar and stellar power – are studied by the Ovate. Knowing that it is only through death to one state that we achieve a wider life, the Ovate is in this sense also a psychotherapist. The Ovate learns and teaches that it is often only by letting go, rather than holding on, that we truly find what we have been seeking.
How is the Ovate way of relevance to us today? The fact that many healers – of both body and soul, find Druidry helpful lies in its ability to open the self to something more than just the personal. The story of psychotherapy illustrates this point, and suggests that we can place Druidry, and the work of the Ovates in particular, at the leading edge of psyche (soul) therapies.
Psychotherapy as a form of healing began by discovering the value in opening up communication between the different parts of ourselves – within our intrapersonal world. Healing occurred, for example, when our sexual selves were able to relate more openly with our rational cultivated selves; or when our hearts were able to speak freely to our minds. But this was found to be insufficient – for not only do we need to have successful communication between the different parts of ourselves, we also need effective communication with those around us, in our interpersonal relationships. Group therapy was born. More healing occurred as we shared our fears and joys with others – discovering our common humanity and our unique differences. But more was needed – we could resolve a good deal of our intrapersonal and interpersonal difficulties, but we were still haunted by ‘existential neurosis’ – we needed to move beyond the personal to the transpersonal, to find our place in existence by going beyond the self. The spiritual psychologies were born. They opened up the channels of communication not only between ourselves and others, but also with our overself, our transpersonal self and with the divine.
By now it looked as if psychotherapists had covered every base – we had been put back into relationship with ourselves, with our fellow humans and with our sense of the divine or spiritual. But to many therapists’ surprise the existential neurosis and sense of alienation often continued for their clients, because in all this therapy they had inadvertently been guilty of ‘speciesism’: they had ignored our relations with the rest of nature. We may have successful communication with humanity and god/dess, but what about with our home, the earth – with the stars and sky, with animals and trees? The Druid argument, and the argument of all earth religions, is that we can only be fully healthy, fully whole physically and psychologically and indeed spiritually, when we are in communion with all of nature.
The walls of the consulting room and the church collapse . . . client and therapist, patient and analyst, confessant and confessor, walk away from the debris, remove their clothes and immerse themselves in the pool that stands before them in the light of the sun. Only then are they whole. Only then can they claim that the healing is complete.
We now have an insight into the healing power that Druidry can bring, and the way in which this can be mediated by the Ovates’ knowledge of herb, tree and animal lore and their ability to commune with the spirits of the departed. But what of their divinatory skills?
Understanding the hidden dynamics of time and knowing the reality of the spirit worlds enables the Ovate to divine without the interference of the rational mind. This mantic work falls into three categories: augury – which is the making of predictions based on signs and omens; divination – which uses particular methods for finding hidden things – whether they be ‘intangibles’ such as future events or ‘tangibles’ such as water or metal; and prophecy – which needs no outer methods but which depends on the Ovate’s ability to channel higher wisdom in relation to future events.
The methods of augury used in the past were many: from simple weather-witching to sophisticated interpretation of bird flight; from the observation of animal behaviour to the interpretation of planetary configurations. Almost certainly each of the four elements was used for augury, as they were used for healing. It is likely that the signs and associated feelings conveyed by soil cast on a sheet or drumskin were read as a modern fortune teller might read the tea-leaves (or, in eastern Europe, the coffee-grounds), and the shapes of passing clouds or of the images found in a fire or a pool of water were undoubtedly further sources of inspiration. We know the term the Irish Druids used for cloud divination – neldoracht – and we know too of more complex methods of divining used in Ireland, including tarbhfeis, which involved the diviner being wrapped in a bull’s hide to aid their clairvoyance.
The Druid took four wands of yew and upon them he wrote Oghams, and by his keys of poetic wisdom and through his Ogham he divined that Etain was in Bri Leith with Midir.
(Tochmarc Etaine)
Divination is a more sophisticated form of augury. It need not be simple fortune-telling – an attempt to see into the future. It can be an effective means of revealing hidden dynamics – whether they are within oneself or within a relationship, or within a group. Divination then becomes a means of gaining self-knowledge and a deeper understanding of the hidden causes behind appearances. Seen in this way it becomes yet another way that we can try to go beyond the surface, to plumb the depths, to look at causes rather than effects. Modern-day Ovates are able to turn in this quest to a number of distinctly Druidic methods of divination, including working with the sacred animals of the Celtic and Druid tradition and working with Ogham, which has come to be known as the sacred tree-alphabet of the Druids. It is claimed that the Druids used Ogham for divination. Medieval Irish stories such as the Tochmarc Etaine suggest that this was so, even though actual inscriptions in Ogham, found on stones, have only been dated to the fourth and fifth centuries. Although from the historian’s point of view we cannot be certain that the ancient Druids used Ogham, it certainly provides us today with an evocative means of understanding hidden dynamics and future events, and has become an integral part of modern Ovate training.
However, it is not only the divination of the subtle, intangible realms of the psyche and the future that is the field of Ovate study. Divination can be carried out for tangible things – for water and for metal, for items lost or deliberately hidden. Traditionally the Ovate divines with a wand of hazel. Water sources were always accorded special reverence by the Druids – not only were they naturally dependent on a good supply of drinking water, but springs were revered because they demonstrated the source of life springing up out of the body of Mother Earth, and they were seen as access points to the Otherworld.
The Ovates’ divining skills would have been used to find water sources and sources of metallic ore, for this was important to the Celts who used both bronze and iron. The Druids, in their capacity as Pheryllt, or Druid Alchemists, worked the metals that the Ovates found in a raw state in the earth. And here we perceive another function of the Ovate – to seek out and find what is hidden. We can surmise that it was the Ovates’ function in the past, and can still be today, to find the sacred groves in which the Druids work. Likewise it is the Ovate who finds the wisdom of the spirit, plant and animal world and brings it back for the benefit of all. It could even have been part of the Ovate’s work to find criminals and stolen property or missing bodies. As ‘discoverer of the hidden’, the Ovate might have been the detective as the Druid was the magistrate or judge.
Finally we learn that prophecy was a function of the Ovate. Here the Ovate needed no outer form to help find what was hidden. Their years of training as a Bard, then as an Ovate, their ability to commune with the spirits, their refinement of their being and their attunement to the world of nature meant that at certain times they could prophesy – predicting the future or warning of possible dangers so that they could be avoided. Merlin is seen in his Ovate role when he utters the prophecies compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century.33
The ability to prophes
y should be understood in its widest sense within the Ovate work. The Bard learns how to become open to transpersonal creative energies in order to provide inspiration and integration. The Ovate builds on this connection with the inner world and combines it with an ability to negotiate time-tracks, and thus can also channel transpersonal creative energies. These channellings may take the form of prophecies – in the sense that they deal with that aspect of time which we term the ‘future’ – or they may deal with hidden levels of reality and causation that require elucidation and communication.
The Ovate curriculum is vast indeed. Just as the Bard needed years of training, so did the Ovate, although we have no details of this from the classical authors. When Druidry went underground with the triumph of Christianity, the Bards suffered the least – they simply pretended to be ‘mere’ minstrels and poets, all the while carrying the tradition in their hearts and hidden in their words and music. The Ovates undoubtedly continued their work as healers and herbalists – keeping the tradition alive though in a more discreet way, becoming eventually perhaps the Cunning Folk or ‘white witches’ who acted as local doctors for those too poor – or too wise – to consult the nearest leech, charlatan or quack.34
Today, those who study the Ovate grade learn to work with the powers of nature – they learn the Ogham and come to know the trees as living beings with their own medicines and gifts. They work with the sacred animals of tradition, and with different methods of divination, and many begin a study of herbalism or other methods of healing. In particular they learn how to encourage the flow of Nwyfre through the body. (Nwyfre is the Druid term for life-force, known as chi or prana in the East.)35
The tree which represents the Ovate grade is the yew – the tree of death and rebirth, of eternity. The north is the place of the Ovate, for it is the grade in which we learn of ‘The spiritual intelligence of the night’ (The Book of Taliesin) when we understand the mystery that the spirit is reborn in the place of greatest darkness. The times associated with the Ovate grade are autumn and winter, evening, dusk and midnight – times when we assimilate the experience of the day or the year, and when we are nourished by the great depths of the unconscious.
DRUIDS
* * *
Often when the combatants are ranged face to face, and swords are drawn and spears bristling, these men come between the armies and stay the battle, just as wild beasts are sometimes held spellbound. Thus even among the most savage barbarians anger yields to wisdom, and Mars is shamed before the Muses.
(Diodorus Siculus Histories, circa 8 BC)
The reason we tend to visualise the Druid as an old man in our imagination is partly due, perhaps, to a realisation that by the time one has undertaken the training of Bard and Ovate one is bound to be ancient! We cannot be sure of the exact time it took, but Caesar mentions that some spent as long as twenty years in their education at Druid colleges. But this is really little different from the time young people now take to complete their education, and Caesar’s account is reminiscent of the situation of monastic schools in Europe and as far afield as Tibet, where young people would go or be sent for a complete education: free from the burden of taxation or military service and ‘instigated by such advantages, many resort to their school even of their own accord, whilst others are sent by their parents and relations’. Commentators point out that ‘twenty years’ could have been a figure of speech to denote a long duration of time, or that it might have actually been nineteen years, since the Druids almost certainly used the metonic cycle, a method of reckoning based on the nineteen-year eclipse cycle.
If the Bard was the poet and musician, the preserver of lore, the inspirer and entertainer, and the Ovate was the doctor, detective, diviner and seer, what was the Druid? Their functions, simply stated, were to act as advisor to rulers, as judge, as teacher, and as an authority in matters of worship and ceremony. The picture this paints is of mature wisdom, of official position and privilege, and of roles which involved decision-making, direction and the imparting of knowledge and wise counsel.
We tend to think of the Druid as a sort of priest – but this is not borne out by the evidence. The classical texts refer to them more as philosophers than priests. At first this appears confusing since we know they presided at ceremonies, but if we understand that Druidry was a natural, earth religion as opposed to a revealed religion, such as Christianity or Islam, we can see that the Druids probably acted not as mediators of divinity, but as directors of ritual, guiding and containing the rites.
In addition to this, we know that they fulfilled a number of other functions, which we shall now examine. Separating these out is for the sake of convenience only, for in reality the roles often merged and combined, as we realise when Caesar tells us ‘They have many discussions as touching the stars and their movement, the size of the universe and of the earth, the order of nature, the strength and the powers of the immortal gods, and hand down their lore to the young men.’ Here we see the Druids as scientists – as astronomers and mathematicians, as philosophers discussing the powers of the gods, and as teachers passing on their wisdom.
DRUIDS AS JUDGES
The Druids are considered the most just of men, and on this
account they are entrusted with the decision, not only of the
private disputes, but of the public disputes as well; so that, in
former times, they even arbitrated cases of war and made the
opponents stop when they were about to line up for battle, and the
murder cases in particular were turned over to them for decision.
(Strabo, Geographica)
It is they who decide in almost all disputes, public and private; and if any crime has been committed, or murder done, or there is any dispute about succession or boundaries, they also decide it, determining rewards and penalties: if any person or people does not abide by their decision, they ban such from sacrifice, which is their heaviest penalty.
(Caesar, De Bello Gallico)
It is natural that those people perceived as the wise elders of the community should be turned to for judgement and arbitration in times of dispute or when a crime has been committed, and some of the most interesting information about the ancient Druids can be found in the old Irish laws, known as the Brehon laws. Irish texts tell us that in 714 BC the High King Ollamh Fódhla formalised the legal system by founding the Festival of Tara, at which every three years the laws already in existence were discussed and revised: and we know some of the names of the more prominent Druid judges of old, including a female judge named Brigh, a male judge named Finnchaemh, and Cennfaela, the Druid of King Cormac, who in the third century AD was said to be the most learned judge in Ireland. Peter Beresford Ellis, in his book The Druids, says: ‘the Irish system is the oldest surviving complete codified legal system in Europe with its roots in ancient Indo-European custom and not in Roman law, and is therefore the oldest surviving Celtic system of jurisprudence, and one in which the Druids are still mentioned’. Fortunately for us these laws have been recorded – set down in writing as early as the fifth century, according to some sources. Even as late as the seventeenth century some aspects of the Brehon code survived in Ireland, despite attempts by the English to suppress it. Charles Graves, the grandfather of Robert Graves whose book on Ogham The White Goddess was seminal in the revival of interest in goddess worship and paganism, was an expert on Ogham and on Brehon law. He initiated a Royal Commission to transcribe and translate this treasure-trove of information, which was published in six volumes between 1865 and 1901.
Reading the Brehon laws today offers us an opportunity to enter into the minds of the early Druids – and to many people’s surprise, rather than discovering the beliefs of a primitive and savage people, we find a highly considered system that is mostly based upon ‘restorative justice’ – a concept that is found, for example, on the other side of the world among the Maoris of New Zealand.36 Restorative justice is concerned with compensation rather than revenge – the
offender rather than simply being incarcerated is made to make good the damage or loss they have caused the victim. This picture was marred somewhat in Ireland by licence being given for vengeance killings, but these were allowed only in response to the murder of family members, and limits were exerted on retaliation. Undoubtedly we are seeing here an attempt to control situations that could so easily escalate.
As we would expect from Druid law-makers, severe penalties resulted from the unlawful cutting down of trees, with important species such as oak and yew being designated ‘chieftain trees’ and carrying greater demands for compensation than ‘peasant trees’. And when it came to marriage and divorce the Brehon laws were more humane than the later Christian laws. In the times of the ancient Druids, a woman could divorce a man for a number of reasons: if he was so obese that he was unable to make love, for example, or if he preferred to sleep with men, if he beat her leaving visible marks, or if he spread malicious stories about her.37 Under the Christian post-Druidic law in Ireland, divorce was illegal until 1995 – even if a husband or wife was physically abusive.
The Brehon laws offer us the most complete view of the kind of society that the ancient Druids helped to guide and lead. We have information from Wales too, but the old Welsh laws known as the ‘Laws of Hywel Da’ were recorded much later than the Brehon laws and offer us less insight into the world of the ancients.
Druid Mysteries Page 8