In the British drama The Legend of Merlin, the Druid has always been an enemy of King Arthur as a villain, but william Stuckly, an advocate of the modern Druid revival movement, drew an imaginary picture of the British Druid priesthood, which changed the image of the barbarian pagan in the past and appeared as a forest sage.
"The indigenous religion of the Aboriginal peoples of the British Isles was rebuilt and revived long ago, and their priests, the 'gurus', were called Gwydd. These people were divided into two classes: the first was the high priests who could interfere in tribal politics, and the second was the lower priests, the former known as Der-Wydd, or Druid, and the latter known as Go-Wydd or O-vydd, or what is now called Ovate. The priests of both ranks were collectively known as the Beird Order (also known as Bards-Bard, or Bard). The Beirdd Order became increasingly organized, and three classes emerged: the senior druid, the intermediate privileged Bard (Berdd Braint), and the lower Ovad. ”
"Druid" refers to the high-ranking Celt priests, who were scattered in Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Asia Minor, and the Balkans from the 5th to the 1st century AD, and were scorned by the Romans as barbarians. There are many explanations for the original meaning of the word druids: in Irish," "Drui" means "man of the oak tree," and in Greek mythology there are also female priests called driads, and legend has it that each oak tree was inhabited by elves, and these tree spirits conveyed oracles to humans through dryads. It is also thought to come from the Gaelic word druidh, meaning "wise man" or "witch"; the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder or Gaius Plinius Secundus (23/24-79 AD) believes it derives from the Greek word "drus", meaning "an oak tree"; and the Sanskrit word dru means "wood". Other variations include: druides, druidai, drysidae, druvis, drui, etc. However, the oak tree is indeed an indispensable part of the Druid religion.
By the time of the Roman conquest, the power of the Druid priests had spread throughout the British Isles and Gaul, and had overwhelming dominance over the common people. They act as messengers between gods and men, and without the support of the Druid priests, the Celtic tribes cannot even maintain their own politics, so even if the two tribes are about to fight, as long as the white-robed Druid priests appear to mediate, then the two sides must collect their swords and negotiate.
The earliest and most widespread systematic record of the Druid Order comes from the Roman Expeditionary Force, and Caesar, in The Gallic Chronicles, portrays the Druid priests as a group of bloodthirsty pagans, claiming that they "made up huge idols out of branches and then put the living into them to burn..." The same record also claims that the Druid priests slaughtered prisoners and prisoners of war for divination: "They stabbed people to death with daggers, predicting the future according to the spasms and guts of death... The heart of a virgin must also be dug up in the ceremony of worshipping the giants of the world..." These became the handles of the poet and philosopher William Blake's lashing out at the natural sciences.
It is difficult to say whether these descriptions are credible, for in the case of Caesar himself, who had never been exposed to Druid religious rituals, and whose information relied entirely on his army of nobles and freedmen. As we all know, the Romans at that time regarded themselves as the center of civilization, and regarded the surrounding tribes as inferior barbarians, it was difficult to ask them to look at and record the truth of the Celtic religion with an equal mentality, because the number of Druid priests was not large, and during the war with Rome, they also lost a large number of the order population, so they gradually declined around the Common Era, and the sparse remains that were preserved were systematically destroyed by the influx of Christians after the Norman conquest.
According to available information, the Druid Order appeared in the matriarchal society of the Aboriginal peoples of Britain, and because of the social environment at that time, only women were allowed to participate, divided into three classes. After entering the patriarchal society, men gradually entered the Order, sitting on an equal footing with the priestess, and existed at the same time. The Masonic scholar Robert Brown (32° of the Scottish Rite) believes that the knowledge of the Druid Order comes from the culture of the Phoenician colonists, according to Thomas Maurice's "Indian Antiquities", the Phoenicians began colonizing Britain thousands of years ago in order to mine tin ore The debate on this issue is usually endless, and some argue that the origins of the Druid religion, like Odin tantra, come from Eastern Buddhism. And because the Druid priests studied nature and worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, they were often involved with the idolatry religions of the Hellenistic and Latin peoples, and Caesar also recorded in the aforementioned Gallic War that he found that these "barbarians" actually worshiped the stars and gods, just like the Romans worshiped Mercury, Mars, and Yupiter! Although various opinions are entangled, there are many scholars who support the Druid religion. Mr. Manly.P. Hall, on the other hand, has a different view, arguing that the Druid religion and other ancient religions in the world do not have an inheritance relationship and develop in parallel, but Mr. Hall believes that this situation arises because the ancient religions we see now were founded by the survivors of the remarkable civilization of Atlantis who fled to the rest of the world and originated from the same ancestor, which seems to be more than externally...
The Druid priests were proficient in geography, natural science, natural theology (nature worship, similar to the Indian Tandhara tantra) and astrology (astronomy). Primitive surgical tools made by Druid priests have been unearthed in both England and Ireland, and as doctors, they cultivated and studied various herbs, and Eliphas Levi, a prominent modern mystic scholar, wrote in his book The History of Magic:
"The Druid priests were clergy and doctors who used spells in the hope of achieving magnetic healing. The drugs they often use are parasitic sprigs and snake eggs. The Druid priests cut parasitic plants through solemn and sacred rituals, because they believed that plants like truffles and pentaplants had special magnetic forces and therefore had special therapeutic effects (the so-called 'magnetic therapy' of Levi's time referred to as hypnosis)..."
Because the Druid religion worshipped nature and worshipped the oak tree as a symbol of the Supreme God, they considered mistletoe, which parasitizes the oak tree, to be a panacea with divine power and the best curative effect, and of course to be collected through a particularly serious ritual. This ceremony can only be performed on the days of the full moon and the new moon, or on the sixth night of each month, when the arch-Druid, the highest of the druid priests, wears white robes, wears gold jewelry, and holds a golden scythe up a tree. Gold jewelry represents the sun and symbolizes that he himself is the personification of the sun, while the shape of the curved golden scythe or golden scepter in the hand imitates the "most holy month that preserves the seed of all things" in the crescent moon-druid religion (the same symbolic meaning as Noah's Ark, which may actually come from the earlier female menstrual blood cult), and during the collection process, the mistletoe cannot fall to the ground, otherwise it will be contaminated by the unclean fluctuations of the earth, so the collected parasitic wood must be caught in the air with a white cloth (white symbolizes "purity"). After the collection of mistletoe parasites, the white bull sacrifice is slaughtered under the tree, which fully reflects the Druid religion's worship of natural forces. In addition to the sun and moon, the Druid priests were also very reverent of Mercury, and they worshipped the stones of the naturally formed cube as Mercury to pay homage to the "spirit of nature", which is also considered to be the prototype of the legend of the "sword in the stone".
The golden disc behind the Great Druid's head is carved with radial rays of light, symbolizing his personification of the rising sun. His gold bust was able to detect honesty, and legend has it that it was often worn in court for witnesses, and if he testified under false pretenses, the corset would strangle him to death. His golden sickle shape symbolizes the crescent moon and the ark – according to early Druid order records, it also represents a small glass boat called the "Cwrwg Gwydrin", an important prop in the sacrificial ceremony (the glass vessel symbolizes the moon). The belt buckle is decorated with a whole white stone, which has the function of concentrating light, and uses this stone to reflect the sun's light to ignite the altar fire during the sacrifice.
The Druid Order, which pursues the principle of oral knowledge, is a "college" that is secret and not known to outsiders, and the purpose of this is to ensure that knowledge and religious etiquette are imparted only to a limited number of selected people, and not to the ignorant and ignorant masses who cherish knowledge. There is also a secret knowledge within the Druid Order that is taught only to selected volunteers, that is, the "Druid Secret Instrument", which is only dictated to volunteers of noble birth and high morals, and usually the entrance test of such secret instruments is extremely barbaric, the volunteer mortality rate is very high, and its true content is almost impossible to pass on, in the eyes of the people at that time, it seemed to be a kind of magic, but the Druid secret instrument is the same as the secret ritual of ancient and modern times. It is only a unique philosophical view of life and death and human self-exploration, not a magic trick. The Druid Order believes that the human soul transcends the body, is immortal, that everything done in this life will be rewarded in the afterlife, and that hell is only a place of testing for atonement. The Celts believed that the Druid priests were in charge of the fate of all mankind, that their teachings could save mankind, and that humanity would repeatedly rise from hell in order to pay for the crimes they had committed, and that death was not the end of the soul, but the first step to heaven.
The educational system of the Druid Order is divided into three faculties:
The lowest-ranking academy is called "Ovate or Ovydd, the name may come from the sacred bird eggs collected by the Druid Order"), and students wear green robes because green is the color that stands for "learning" in the Druids. Ovad students studied medicine, astrology (astronomy), poetry, and music. Ovad students emphasize holistic development and are able to face life and nature and problems independently. The Owad cadets did not bear religious obligations, but when his performance was recognized, he was able to be selected to become a Druid priest.
The middle-ranking academy is called "Bard" (Bard or Beirdd), and Bard cadets wear sky blue robes, which in Druid religions represent the colors of "harmony" and "truth." Bard cadets were asked to recite twenty thousand lines of druid religious poems, not to be forced to recite them all on the basis of understanding, but to serve as instructors for volunteers who participated in the "Druid Rites", who wore blue, green, and white robes with vertical stripes – the sacred tricolor of the Druid Order. Bud cadets sometimes held the ancient British instrument, the eleven-stringed instrument, which was made from human hair, while the Druid priests believed that the number of strings "eleven" was half the number of human ribs, with anatomically symbolic significance.
The highest-ranking academy is the "Druid" (Druid or Derwyddon), the purpose of the Druid Academy is to train Druid priests who can perform religious rituals, and to enter this academy, one must first graduate from Bard College. The Druid priests wore white robes, because white symbolizes purity in Druid religions and also symbolizes the sun. The Druid priests were divided into six classes, all of which wore white robes, distinguished by the color of the belt. A priest who succeeded in passing all six ranks was honored as the Arch-Druid, and he was regarded as the supreme elder of the Druid Order. However, there are also claims that the title of Grand Druid is hereditary, and there are also claims that this rank is only an honorary title, as in the case of Freemasons in the 33rd class, and is awarded only to elected persons with the highest knowledge, character, and contribution. Of course, the specific situation is still inconclusive.
According to James Gardner, there are usually only two Great Druids present at the same time on the British Isles, holding golden scepters shaped like a crescent moon and wearing garlands woven with oak leaves. Among the Druid priests, the younger members shaved their beards and were able to wear ordinary national costumes, while the older members grew long beards and wore luxurious gold jewelry. The level of teaching in the Druid schools in Britain was higher than in continental Europe, so Druid students in Gaul often transferred to Britain for further study (this argument was proposed by British scholars in the 18th century and contained elements of regional discrimination).
According to Levi, the Druid priests adhered to strict ascetic living norms, living like savages in caves or huts made of rocks, sometimes in huts deep in the forest, believing that they would be closer to nature. Most of the Druid priests were not married, and their number was small, because it took a long time for a student to graduate, during which time new students were generally not admitted.
J.F. Clarke's book Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke writes:
"The Druid Order believes that there are three worlds of mutual reincarnation, namely the world of Elysium of the upper, the present, and the miserable world of the lower, and that the 'three' have a special meaning in the Druid Order, symbolizing the three purposes of reincarnation: the first is to condense the attributes of all things in the world into the soul, the second is to acquire all the knowledge between heaven and earth, and the third is to gain the power to defeat evil. It also symbolizes the three aspects of knowledge (the nature, cause, and function of things), the three diminishing phenomena (darkness, hypocrisy, death), and the three increasing phenomena (light, reality, life). ”
Druid rituals were so dependent on stone that they usually did not build man-made temples, and religious sacrifices were performed entirely in uncultivated oak forests, usually on the night of a full moon or new moon, or on the sixth day of each month. However, they also performed ceremonies in the wilderness, and William Stukri, the founder of the Druid movement in the 18th century, believed that the many "Stonehenges" that existed in Britain were the altars of the Druid priests in the wilderness, and that the surviving Stonehenge was only part of the altar. According to the restored drawings he drew, these unpolished boulders form three huge totem arrays: one is a pure circle, called the "temple"; one is a combination of the circle array and the long snake array, called the "snake temple"; and the other is the shape of the wings stacked around the circle, called the "wing temple". As for why Stukri thinks they are related to the Druid religion, it is because the stones used in Stonehenge are natural stones that have not been processed in any way, which is easily reminiscent of the nature worship of the Druids. Although the origin of Stonehenge is currently inconclusive, it can be known that the Druid priests had a wealth of mineralogical knowledge.
In Christian times, it was also said that Stonehenge was built by Merlin. Originally, Merlin referred to the wizards of the Druid Order, but in ancient Wales, Merlins followed Druid canons, communicating with goblins in nature, prophecies and divination, much like the Shaman of the North American Indians. Like the Druid priests, Merlin was originally appointed by women. In the Middle Ages, Merlin also referred to a falcon (the falcon) that only women could manipulate. In the Legend of the Holy Grail, Merlin sang a magical song in honor of Arthur's uncle, calling for huge stones from Ireland to fly in, and overnight built Stonehenge on the plains of Salisbury. In the same story, Arthur's Knights of the Round Table surround the Round Table, mensa, which originally means "calendar", symbolizing the calendar of the Druid Order, and 28 Knights of the Round Table symbolize the 28 days of a month (13 months in a year) in the Druid calendar. The prototype of the round table may be a symbol of Druid religious astrology.
The initiation ceremony of the Druid Rites is also held in the depths of the dense forest or in the dark caves far from the people, and there is no detailed record of the contents of the Druid Rituals, and it is only known that the Druid Order will take the sixth day of each month and the day of the new moon and the full moon as the sacred auspicious day, and will teach volunteers the contents of the creation myth, the secrets of the gods, the methods of making secret medicines, and the content of astrology and witchcraft. The symbol of the Druid's secret ritual is the cross and the serpent, and the priests made a T-shaped cross out of oak branches, this cross wrapped around the snake is the symbol of hu, the supreme god of the Druid order, the sun god, and it is said that Hu was born at dawn on December 25, from the ancient Celtic poem "Summer Kingdom", he was killed by evil forces and resurrected through a series of harsh tests and mysterious rituals, and brought the earth back to life. In Phiber's book Pagan Idolatry, the initiation ceremony of the Druids is divided into three stages, all of which are successfully passed and survived, and these tests include putting volunteers buried alive in coffins representing the death of the sun god, and drifting in the sea in a small boat without a roof. Those who were able to pass the three stages of the test were called "regenerators", who received secret knowledge from the Druid priests, and who were able to rise to the privileged class and serve as high officials in the Celtic tribes.
Even in the centuries after Christian control of Britain, there were still many indigenous people who converted to Christianity and embraced Druidism, and the Catholic Church in Ireland is still called the deirthech, a word from the Druid religion, meaning "House of the Oak Tree". At the beginning of the 18th century, Dr. Stukri, an archaeologist and physician at the University of Cambridge, a Masonic fellow and priest of the Church of England, was a scholar. William Stuckly (1687-1765) led a campaign to rebuild the Druid religion, and despite his racial superiority motives (preaching that British culture was more advanced than on the European continent), his work helped England to some extent reacquaint itself with its indigenous religion, so that the Druid religious tradition still exudes charm in the sphere of influence of Christian culture.