Druidcraft

by Gary Colcombe

  author and herbalist Ellen Evert Hopman, writes, 'We added St. John's Wort to our candle boats. The ancients considered it the perfect combination of fire and water (and the whole universe is made of fire and water in Indo-European thinking). So it seemed right to use it in a ritual that involved putting sacred fire onto sacred water. It all goes back to the Agni/Soma hymns that are in the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda has proto-Indo-European roots, just like the Celtic tradition. Where fire and water come together one has the strongest possibility for magic. That is why a Fire Goddess like Brighid is invoked into a healing well.'

  It is well known that Witches dance in a circle to create a 'cone of power' with which to project their spells. Dancing in a sacred circle is also carried out by Druids, and Charles Mackay suggests that hints of this, and traces of old Druidic chants, can be found in folk songs. He mentions an unusual word 'Rumbelow' which was used as a chorus in many old songs, both English and Scottish, as in 'With heigh and howe, and rumbelow'. In one old English sea shanty, recorded in 1609, the Phrase 'dance the rumbelow' is translated as:

  Shall we go dance to round, around,

  Shall we go dance the round

  He suggests that the word is 'apparently another remnant of the old Druidical chants sung by the priests when they walked in procession round their sacred circles of Stonehenge and others, and clearly traceable to the Gaelic - riomball, a circle; riomballach, circuitous; riomballachd, circularity'. Gerald Gardner also wrote, in Witchcraft Today, '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.'

  In The Book of Druidry, Ross Nichols writes, 'Druidry is the Western form of an ancient universal philosophy, culture or religion, dating from the days of early man when the three were one. It is of the stone circle culture, the groves of sacred trees, the circular dance.' He also talks of the basic ideas of Witchcraft, including the cone of power generated by the ring dance in a stone circle, saying that Witchcraft knows a great deal about this, and that 'Druidry included these amongst its ideas, together with orientation and the later knowledge of sun and moon power.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Waters of the Well,

  Druidry, Wicca and Druidcraft as Ways of Freedom

  I come from the West into the East

  I am from the place of recollecting and my heart

  is strangely stirred.

  On my right hand is the place of fire

  and at my left hand is water

  For my right hand holds the sun my father

  and my left band the moon my Mother

  Before me are the diamonds of Iight …

  'A Human Situation', Ross Nichols

  It is time to leave Avronelle now. The sun has set. The candle-boats can no longer be seen. Fire and water have merged in the darkness of the ocean and a thousand stars have appeared in the night sky.

  As you travel in your imagination away from Avronelle and back to the everyday world, you review your experiences in the Forest School. There you learnt about magic and spellcraft, seasonal rites and tides. You learned different rites: for initiation and home-blessing, for inner union, and for the blessings of the Goddess. You learned of healing and of herbs, and you listened to the old tales.

  All that you learnt has been drawn from the world of inspiration - from the Otherworld and from the past - from images, ideas, stories, customs and folk practices of ancient times. And this has all been woven into a particular form and presented to you in the twenty-first century. Witchcraft and Druidry as they are practised today are also forms woven creatively in modern times, but they are forms drawing on the deepest roots of our spiritual ancestry. Druidcraft, Druidry and Wicca are above all spiritualities that foster creativity and freedom, and each of us is free to draw on these same inspirations to craft spiritual ways that suit us - in our circumstances, in our times.

  Until recently, most people felt they had to make a choice between being a Witch or a Druid. You went for instinct or intellect, body or spirit - ecstatic dancing naked around a bonfire, or solemn ceremony in robed splendour amidst ancient stones. That distinction was real for many people, but it was fundamentally artificial, based on what people thought Witches and Druids were or should be.

  In reality, both Druidry and Wicca draw upon the same wellspring of the Western Magical tradition for their style of working: in a magic circle that is often consecrated with fire and water, and where the four directions are invoked. They both rely heavily on the concept of four elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire, with a fifth being Spirit. Both have a system of three degrees with three initiations. Both celebrate the eightfold year. But when they were developed in modern times, these virtually identical structures were first used in two entirely different ways. Wicca worked with the power of the union of opposites. Coven work was intense, private and dealt with the Gods. Druidry worked with the results of this union in creativity, and was less intense, often public, and dealt 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, but there is no reason why they cannot be combined, and this is what has often happened amongst Druid and Wiccan groups in recent years.

  At the heart of Wicca lies the theme of God and Goddess united as one. The introduction of this theme in modern times was inspired. It restored to indigenous, pagan spirituality the fundamental understanding of the importance of the relationship between the two great manifestations of divinity, which we call Masculine and Feminine. This understanding has a noble lineage, reaching its greatest sophistication in the Taoist and Tantric philosophies of the East, and the Alchemical wisdom of the West. And this is where the two circles of Druidry and Wicca meet and merge - in the alchemical wedding of God and Goddess, in the mystery of Divine Love, and also in the identical aims of Ovate and Witch to heal and to work with the powers of Nature, the powers of star and stone, animal and plant.

  It is as if the two founding fathers of modern Wicca and Druidry, Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols, caught different parts of the mystery as they dipped their hands into the well. Nichols caught the magic of the Bard, the magic of history and the written and spoken word, Gardner caught the magic of God and Goddess, the thrill of the spiral dance and the union of cup and wand.

  Combined, their contributions to modern paganism blossom, gaining authenticity and breadth, vitality and depth. Enriched with that sense of continuity and tradition that comes from the Bardic stories, Gardner's Wicca can draw upon myths and images from the land and culture in which it was born. Enriched with an awareness of the inherent sexuality of life within spirituality, Nichols' Druidry is refreshed at its roots.

  In the last years of his life, while Nichols worked on The Book of Druidy, laying out most of what he had learned about the Druid way, he carved two figures of the God and the Goddess out of two tree trunks. Once they were carved, he painted them in bright colours. He did this outside his hut at the Five Acres Naturist resort, where Gerald Gardner had developed his first coven.

  As he carved the wood, allowing the images of Goddess and God to emerge beneath his blade, he must have ruminated on the fact that his friend Gerald had built a new religion based on these two figures and their interaction, while he, Ross, had chosen to act as proponent of another style of Nature Spirituality which stressed not so much the Divine Mother and Father and their interaction, but the fruit of their interaction instead – creativity in all its forms. Unwittingly, they had developed two perfectly complementary systems, which can be combined to create a spiritual path rooted deep in the mythology and soul of these lands.

  Each system, like each circle of the Glastonbury well cover is complete in itself. Whoever has truly worked with either knows this. But if allowed to meet, both systems interact to create a third way - a way that we can call, if we wish, Druidcraft.

  This way is centred upon a love of life and the natural world, not upon a desire to transcend
or escape it. The story from Irish tradition of King Cormac's encounter with the sea-god Manannan mac Lir perfectly describes this type of sensuous spirituality that recognizes the existence of both this world and the Otherworld, and which advocates drawing strength and sustenance from both realms. In the story, Cormac is shown a pool with five streams running from it. Manannan explains to Cormac that those who are wise drink from each of the five streams and from the pool itself, and that each of the streams represents one of the senses, while the pool represents Spirit - the deep centre within each of us.

  Inspired by the images and ideas evoked by such tales, and by the worlds of Witch and Druid, we can follow a path today that has been sketched out by writers such as Nichols and Gardner, and those who have followed since. Druidcraft, Druidry and Wicca, are ways of empowerment and of freedom - not dogmatic religious systems, but new spiritualities, magical ones, that draw their inspiration from the ancient past, while offering ways of celebration and working that are constantly changing and evolving. Rather than presenting us with ready-rnade systems that we must slavishly adopt wholesale, they offer instead inspiration and the ingredients that we can creatively use to fashion our own unique path to suit our own unique lives.

  The reason most of us are drawn to such paths, rather than to one of the mainstream ready-made religions offering 'all the answers', is that somewhere inside we understand that we are not supposed to be a passive consumer of spirituality, but instead an active participant in a life that is inherently spiritual. We are not in the restaurant, we are in the kitchen! Earth religions like Druidry and Wicca offer us ingredients - ideas for rituals, stories, folklore, techniques - that can be combined in dozens of different ways to provide us, our family and friends with exactly what we need. They are ways of empowerment, because they put us in charge of our lives, not ways of dis-empowerment with a priest or guru telling us what to do.

  In the end, it all boils down to this. There is you and the ocean, you and the sky, you and the land, now and here. The old lore is not meant to remain preserved in a glass case; it is meant to be used, changed, added to and improved. It only stays alive if each of us takes it and uses it in our own way, with our own creative additions and insights, to help us live a life of depth and meaning, beauty and celebration, here and now - upon this earth, beneath this sky, beside this sea.

  The brilliance of the seas has flashed forth.

  The dawn of blessing has arisen.

  What IS this ancient wisdom?

  The source of these living waters is in your head

  And in your eyes.

  Rumi

  CHAPTER 1

  You can see pictures of the well cover and the magical garden in Glastonbury known as the Chalice Well Garden at www.chalicewell.org.uk

  Celtic scholar Erynn Laurie, writes: 'In old Irish, the word for a druid was spelled drui and druidcraft is druidecht. Later it would be spelled draidecht or draoidheachd. In modern Irish, druid is draoi, and Druidcraft is draoidocht.'

  Gardner and Nichols were both interested in the early British Church and became ordained in obscure unorthodox branches of Christianity: Gardner in the Ancient British Church in 1949, Nichols in the Ancient Celtic Church in 1963.

  More details on Nichols and Gardner can be found in In The Grove of the Druids – The Druid Teachings of Ross Nichols, edited by Philip Carr-Gomm and on the website http://druidry.org

  To explore how the modern version of Wicca was developed by Gerald Gardner, see Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of The Moon. For a detailed analysis of the sources of Wiccan rituals, see Janet and Stewart Farrar, Witches' Bible. For further information about how the teachings and rituals were developed, see Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft. For details of the many varieties of Wicca that have evolved in modern times, see Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon.

  To explore how the modern version of Druidry was developed by Ross Nichols, see In the Grove of the Druids - The Druid Teachings of Ross Nichols, edited by Philip Carr-Gomm, and the biography of Ross Nichols on http://druidry.org

  To explore the connections between Witchcraft, Druidry and shamanism, see Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head - Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit.

  Regarding the use of the term Witch, Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at Bristol University and expert on the history of Wicca and Witchcraft, says: 'Perhaps most modern Western liberals might think of a witch-cloctor, shaman or wizard when they hear the term Witch. But most people, even in their society, would think of a cackling evil old woman - and they would be wholly traditional in doing so. The Anglo-Saxon words "wicce'' and "wicca" mean a human who uses magic to harm other humans. By contrast, the wise-folk and cunning-folk were there to use magic to help others, most notably by removing or breaking the spells of the witches. A witch-doctor is not a witch who is a doctor, but a doctor who combats witches, which is what such figures do in tribal societies. The term "white witches'' was first applied to wise-folk by seventeenth-century Puritans intent on combating popular magic, as a term of abuse.' [from a letter] .

  In a complete reversal, the term Witch and Wicca is now used in Pagan and New Age circles to mean someone who uses magic not to harm Others but to help and heal them, and someone - in addition - who follows a spiritual path that draws its inspiration from the Natural world. Throughout this book, this modern positive use of the term applies.

  For the significance of Avronelle and the Long Man of Wilmington, see Philip Carr-Gomm, The Druid Way.

  CHAPTER 2

  The selkie story was adapted from one of the many selkie tales given in David Thomson, The People of the Sea. If you wish to explore some of the meaning and depth in the selkie stories, read the chapter 'Seal Skin Soul Skin' in Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and the entry for the Seal in The Druid Animal Oracle by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm.

  In Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today, a book produced with considersable help from Ross Nichols, a final note at the end of the book (left out in some later editions) says: 'Diana of Ephesus wore a necklace of acorns; many Celtic goddesses are mentioned as wearing them. At witch meetings every woman must wear one.' You might like to make one for your own dedication ceremony, since the oak is also deeply connected to Druidry. (Not all scholars are able to agree about the etymology of the word 'Druid', but most modern authorities agree with the classical authors that the most likely derivation is from the word for oak, combined with the Indo-European root 'wid' - to know – giving us 'One with knowledge of the oak' or 'Wise person of the oak'.)

  If you are interested in comparing the Wiccan and Druid style of circle-casting and calling to the quarters, you can read of the Wiccan style in Vivianne Crowley's Wicca and of the Druid style in Druidry by Philip Shallcrass. These books also give good surveys of both Wicca and Druidry that you may find them helpful in developing your own unique practice of Druidcraft.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Bard's tale was developed from 'The Dream of Oengus' in Early Irish Myths and Sagas, translated and edited by Jeffrey Gantz. See also T.W. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race. The story is the source of inspiration for W.B. Yeats' poem, 'The Dream of Wandering Aengus'.

  A reproduction of the Cumbrian altar-stone can be seen in the 'Adder' card of Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm's The Druid Animal Oracle.

  In addition to Nichols citing Jainism in the excerpt quoted in this chapter from In The Grove of the Druids, the following excerpt from the introductory booklet that he wrote first for the Ancient Druid Order, and then adapted for the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, is relevant to the whole theme of this book:

  The origins of Druidic traditions go back to a past remote indeed, almost as far back as civilisation itself, and at least into Neolithic times. There are links with Aryan and early Hindu culture and what is now the witch cult: reverence for both sun and moon, fivefold and threefold bases of teaching, circular dancing as worship,burning of the dead, the cult of certain animals, the existence of a priest-ruler caste
, transmission of teaching by long memorised poems. The Draus or Druis, a cult within the Jain community, have striking similarities to the western Druids (Latin drus: possibly cognate with drau). Amongst them are stone circles around upright stone altars.

  Jainism does have Dravidian roots, and in the past some scholars have seen links between the Dravidians and the Druids, but both the Druidism reported by the Classical authors, and its modern manifestations seem to bear little resemblance to Jainism past or present.