Druid Mysteries

by Philip Carr-Gomm

  THE GIFTS OF THE ANIMALS

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  We discover the special qualities and gifts which these animals offer through experience – through exploring the world of animals and relating to them out in nature, and through interacting with them in the Otherworld too. The Ovate work in particular is focused on learning how to do this. But in addition to personal experience, we can also learn from the accumulated experience of our ancestors by studying traditional animal lore, and just as certain trees are associated in the Druid tradition with particular qualities, so certain animals have been found to mediate particular attributes too. For example: the bear, boar, cat, dog, goose, otter and raven are all associated with the quality of protection; the adder, boar, dog, frog, ram and raven are connected with healing; the owl and raven with initiation, and so on. When we need the qualities or abilities that these animals represent, we can call upon them to help us – seeing and relating to them in our inner world, dancing or singing with them, and connecting with them in the outer world too.

  RAVEN KNOWLEDGE

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  In the old stories Druids were sometimes referred to as ‘adders’ – those with ‘serpent knowledge’ – and sometimes they were described as those with ‘raven knowledge’. As the associations listed above show, the raven possesses many attributes – mediating healing, prophetic knowledge, protection, and initiatory power.

  The raven is seen as a messenger between the two worlds – this and the next – and for this reason we find ravens buried at the bottom of ancient ritual pits, such as at Danebury in Hampshire. These pits or shafts symbolised the connection between this world and the Otherworld, and the raven was seen as a messenger between the two.

  The early Irish Druids divined according to the flight and cries of birds, and in particular the raven, and the idea of the raven as a bird of divination and prophecy was lodged so firmly in the folk imagination that as late as 1694 in Hertfordshire a raven was reported to have uttered a prophecy three times. Even today the association of the raven with prophecy and protection is openly fostered in the heart of London at the Tower. In the tale of Bran the Blessed, the prophetic god-king Bran (which means ‘raven’) asks that his head be cut off and buried on the White Mount in London, facing the direction of France. As long as his head remained buried there it would protect the kingdom. The Tower of London was later built on the site of the White Mount, and the magical protective power of the buried head was symbolised by the presence of ravens, which are kept at the Tower to the present day to fulfil Bran’s prophecy and ensure the safety of the realm.

  ANIMAL ORACLES, ALLIES AND FAMILIARS

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  Today we can work with the sacred animals of tradition to gain guidance and insight into our lives, and a number of animal oracles have been developed to help us do this – including The Beasts of Albion and The Druid Animal Oracle.

  Sometimes we seem to have a special connection with one or more animals – we feel an affinity with them, they come to us in our dreams, we turn to them in our minds and hearts when we need strength or reassurance. By working with specific techniques to strengthen our bonds with them, these animals can become our spiritual companions, and as our relationship with them deepens, we may feel that they have become our ‘familiars’ – our totem animals – who stay close to us and become our magical allies, partners in our journey through life.

  The animals themselves then teach us, and we can draw as well on the fund of animal lore embodied in tradition – in the old stories and sayings that simply need some thought and time to unlock their secrets, as we can see from the old English adage: Ask the wild bee what the Druids knew.

  EXERCISE

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  After reading this chapter, spend a few moments forgetting all that you have read. Make yourself comfortable and allow yourself to come to a sense of inner centredness and calm. Close your eyes and feel all your concerns falling away from you. Focus for a while on your breathing, and then slowly imagine that you are walking through the forest towards a clearing. As you approach this clearing in the woods you notice that it feels unusually peaceful and calm. There is a special atmosphere here. You find a tree on the edge of the clearing that feels just right for you and you lean against its trunk, and look up at its crown towering high above you. Then you look around this glade, breathing in the smell of the earth, the trees and the flowers, and enjoying the sunlight as it filters down through the trees to the forest floor.

  Think about the realm of the animals and ask if you can meet an animal or bird that can bring you just the kind of energy, healing or guidance that you need. Without thinking rationally about this, just allow the animal or bird to appear in the clearing of its own accord, and enjoy its company, and be sensitive to the qualities it brings you and any message it might have.

  When you are ready to finish, thank the animal for its gift, then see it leave the clearing, and gradually allow your awareness of the glade and the forest surrounding it to dissolve as you become aware of being in your everyday consciousness again, here and now, refreshed and revitalised.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DRUIDRY, WICCA AND THE CRAFT OF MAGIC

  I fancy that certain practices, such as the use of the circle to keep the power in, were local inventions, derived from the use of the Druid or pre-Druid circle.

  Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today

  DRUIDRY AND WICCA represent the two main streams of indigenous ‘earth spirituality’ of western European culture. But though their roots are buried deep in the foundations of that culture, the ways in which they are practised today were formulated only recently and, as we shall see, there are many connections between the two approaches.

  In the 1930s or 40s two men met and became friends and co-workers, probably first at the idyllic naturist community of Spielplatz in Hertfordshire. One was a Druid, the other a poet and historian. Gerald Gardner, a member of the Ancient Druid Order and the Folklore Society, met the poet and teacher Ross Nichols, and discovered that he shared his interest in magic, the occult and the pre-Christian past of Britain. After more than a decade of friendship, Ross became a Druid too, joining the Ancient Order in 1954. This was the same year that Gardner’s first work of nonfiction on witchcraft was published – Witchcraft Today. This book heralded the popularisation of Wicca and began the process that led to it becoming such a significant and dynamic spirituality today.

  At about the time the book was published, Ross took my father to meet Gerald Gardner at their naturist club. They lay in the sun, talked about history and swam in the pool. My father, as editor of a history magazine, would later commission Ross to write articles, but at this time it was Ross who was the editor. He had just finished editing an English translation of Paul Christian’s massive History and Practice of Magic and had gone on to edit Gardner’s book – quite a task according to writers Francis King and Doreen Valiente, since Gardner was not a skilled author.

  Already, before the book was published, Gardner had established a coven, and was hoping to start a Druid group on the Isle of Man. As far as we know Ross did not join his coven, and although interested in Wicca, never considered himself a witch. Instead he continued to pursue his interests in mythology and the seasonal festivals, and began to develop a passion for Druidry. In the end, when Gardner and the old Druid Chief died in 1964, Ross introduced a new kind of Druid practice into the world. It was based on the old lore – on the mythology of Britain and Ireland, on the old bardic tales, on the practices of the Ancient Druid Order, and on ideas drawn from folklore, depth psychology and legend. But it was new because it took all of this material and presented it through the structure of a mystery school that, like Wicca, drew much of its practical inspiration from the immense heritage of the Western magical tradition, which – in a perfect arc – connected the Pythagorean and neo-Pythagorean roots of Western magic to the Pythagoreanism of the ancient Druids. Just like Wicca, this Druidry worked with the magic circle blessed by fire and water,
and with the four natural elements together with a fifth – Spirit – symbolised by the Pythagorean pentagram. It offered three grades or degrees, entered by initiation, of Bard, Ovate and Druid, as opposed to Wicca’s first, second and third degrees. And it celebrated the same eight seasonal festivals.

  Gardner, in a later book, The Meaning of Witchcraft, speculated that the ancient Druids represented the scholarly elite while witchcraft was the religion of the peasants, and whether or not this is true, this perception has affected our views of the two paths. Druidry often appears to be the more scholarly or learned path, while Wicca appears to be the more earthy, intuitive or instinctual way. The two founding fathers of these types of practice certainly embodied these differences – Ross tended to be the dry academic, Gardner the earthy maverick. But things have come a long way since they presented their systems to the world – scholarly approaches in Wicca and instinctual and intuitive approaches in Druidry have developed in tandem, and now many people creatively blend Wiccan and Druidic approaches and find them complementary.

  FOUNDING MOTHERS

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  Although Gardner and Nichols were undoubtedly seminal in their influence on these two strands of modern spirituality, we must remember that new movements that capture the public imagination and grow in popularity do not arise in a vacuum. Both men were influenced by the spirit of the times, whose agenda in post-war Britain urgently required a return to a peaceful harmony with the land. They were both driven by the need in the collective soul for spiritualities that honoured and celebrated the earth and all life, rather than for religions that urged us to transcend nature and the body. And they were influenced, too, by other people – particularly by two women, Doreen Valiente and Vera Chapman, who, if we are to term Gardner and Nichols founding fathers, we should term founding mothers of the movements they initiated.

  Gardner met Valiente in 1952 and immediately encouraged her to improve and augment the rituals in the Wiccan Book of Shadows – a term for the book used to record Wiccan rites, which Gardner apparently adopted on reading of its use in India in an article published in The Occult Observer by a friend of Ross. Valiente, who knew Ross too, wrote inspired poetry with an unashamed expression of sensuality and paganism. Vera Chapman, who matched Ross in both her depth of learning and her fascination for history and poetry, was a successful author, keen proponent of women’s Freemasonry, a member of the Woodcraft-related Kibbo Kift movement and the founder of the Tolkien Society. Like Ross she was also interested in a fairer distribution of wealth, and supported the Social Credit movement. Ross appointed her Pendragon of his Order, and after the success of her Arthurian trilogy, Warner Bros. bought the film rights, using her work as the basis for a disappointing cartoon film – Quest for Camelot.

  Since Valiente and Chapman, other women have contributed immensely to both traditions – bringing a depth and warmth to these spiritualities that now appeal to women just as much as to men. Leaders of Druid groups today tend to have a grounding in Wicca as well as Druidry, and many Wiccans also study Druidry. Each system is complete in itself and some people choose to practise just one, or to practise both at different times. Others choose to combine elements of both ways, and I have explored how this can be done in Druidcraft – the Magic of Wicca and Druidry.

  There are many varieties of Wicca now, just as there are many different styles of Druid practice, which makes it hard to offer comparisons, but on the whole Wicca tends to offer a more defined theology, often calling itself a religion, with most Wiccans believing that Deity exists in the form of the Goddess and her consort, the God. Contemporary Druidry, as we have seen, is considerably less precise, leaving it up to each Druid to decide on his or her conception of Deity. As a result, although much Druid and Wiccan ceremonial is similar, their focus and atmosphere can be quite different. While Wicca tends to work with the Goddess and the God, and with the power of the union of the opposites, Druidry tends to work with the results of this union in creativity, and deals not so much with the gods as with the fruit of their inspiration in poetry and story. Both ways of working are powerful and valid in their own right and need no additions, but they also work well together.57

  Many Druids share the same conception of Deity with Wiccans, but leaving aside theological considerations, solitary practitioners of Wicca, often calling themselves ‘Hedge Witches’ are practically indistinguishable from solitary Ovates, or ‘Hedge Druids’. They share the same interests in attuning themselves to the powers of nature, and in healing, herbalism, and divination.

  A common misunderstanding associates Druids with male sun-worshippers and Wiccans with female moon-worshippers. In reality both Druidry and Wicca reverence earth, sun, moon and stars equally, and nowadays Wiccan and Druid groups tend to have equal numbers of both sexes. Whereas a while ago Wiccan and Druid groups were structured differently – with covens being small and private and groves often being larger and more public – the situation has changed considerably in recent years. This has largely come about as a result of the cross-fertilisation between the two movements, and the Wiccan author Vivianne Crowley speaks of this recent development when she says:

  . . . Much has changed. Druidry has developed greater interest in the traditional magical skills and gifts of its Druid ancestors, and the role of women in Druidry now equals that of men. Wicca has grown closer to Druidry in its provision for family participation and openness as a path for the many rather than the few. Both traditions have evolved to see themselves as part of a growing contemporary spirituality that is concerned with social engagement, planetary responsibility, and providing meaningful philosophy and ethics by which people may live in our increasingly complex multi-cultural world.58

  SPELLCRAFT AND THE MAGICS OF MAKING, QUESTING AND CHANGING

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  At the beginning of this book I mentioned that Druidry offers at least seven gifts to the world – one of which is the gift of magic. Books on Wicca tend to discuss magic quite openly, and spellcraft is often taught from the beginning of Wiccan training. But even though Druidry is fundamentally a magical spirituality, books on Druidry usually avoid the subject of magic, and spellcraft is hardly ever mentioned. This is because the topic of magic can so easily generate ‘glamour’, and far from leading us closer to wisdom, can ensnare us in delusion.

  The problem with the kind of magic that involves the casting of spells, aside from the danger of the misuse of power from insufficient psychological and ethical development, is that it is so easy for an interest in this activity to feed an attitude of consumerism that tempts people to fall yet again into the trap of believing that happiness or fulfilment will come from getting things or having things. The type of magical experience that Druidry fosters is quite the reverse – it is the type of experience you get when you trek out into the wilds of nature and you are overwhelmed with a feeling of awe that has nothing to do with owning or getting anything. When you can look at life, and experience that none of it belongs to you, quite magically and paradoxically you can feel then – in the depths of your being – that you truly belong in the world.

  So the magic taught and practised within Druidry, at least in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, concerns not the attempt to manipulate circumstances or to ‘get things’, but instead the art of opening to the magic of being alive, the art of bringing ideas into manifestation, and the art of journeying in quest of healing, inspiration and knowledge.

  These kinds of magic taught within the Order fall into three categories: the Magic of Making, the Magic of Questing, and the Magic of Changing.

  The Magic of Making concerns the process whereby something as subtle and intangible as a thought, an inspiration, an idea, can be encouraged to manifest in the world. It is the magic of the creative process, and the province of the Bard. The work of attuning to the natural world and the world of Spirit helps us to receive Awen – inspiration. An understanding of the two different sides of ourselves, masculine and feminine, helps us to grow and parent t
he child of that inspiration, and the whole emphasis of the bardic training on the expression of our creativity encourages its nurturing and manifestation.

  The Magic of Questing involves journeying, either in the Otherworld or in this world, to search for inspiration or knowledge, healing or insight. This is the province of the Ovate, who may undertake a magical journey in the physical world to seek auguries and new understanding, through a pilgrimage or vision quest; or who may undertake a journey in the Otherworld through a sweat-house ceremony, meditation, guided visualisation or shamanic journey.

  The Magic of Changing is the magic of transformation – the alchemical process that leads us towards a greater sense of wholeness, integration and empowerment. Once we understand that the most effective way to change our outer lives is to change our inner lives, then the types of spells that we might craft are altogether different from those which seek to manipulate circumstances or obtain material benefits. Although this is the province of the Druid, the work of every grade is fundamentally alchemical and facilitates transformation.

  The attitude of Druidry is that life itself is magical, and that our journey through life is a magical one. Our task is to unburden our hearts and minds and to free our souls so that we can experience that magic and in our turn contribute more of it to the world. To do this, as Marcel Proust realised, involves an inner transformation: ‘The real magic,’ he said, ‘lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.’

  EXERCISE

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  Imagine you are about to study magic. Which magic would you like to learn, and why?