I came across this piece from the BBC today (interestingly, the original headline was stating it was a Scottish Druid, someone must have correctly informed them Scotland didn’t exist back then).

It’s an interesting exercise in facial reconstruction and shows how our ability to interpret the physical remains of our ancestors continues to develop. As much interest for me however, were the comments from Prof Ron Hutton about the historical facts regarding those whom we may consider to be our Druid ancestors.

Almost everything we “know” about the classical Druids came, at best, from second hand sources (and usually a long way down from that) and the only verifiable actual writing written in the first person was from Julius Caesar. Now, Caesar may have been a brilliant military commander (depending from which perspective you choose to accredit him  from) but as Prof Hutton states  “There are problems, first being that Caesar is a prized liar, as people said at the time. He’s a very skilful propagandist who could have easily misrepresented what druids are in order to justify his conquest of their lands. ”

So our primary source of information about the classical Druids turns out to have been the “Donald Trump” of his time.

It’s something that has bothered me for a while. I see on many forums, people stating with absolute confidence that the Classical Druids definately used to do (insert habit / ritual/ prescribed world view of choice) because Caesar has told us so.

It’s like two hundred / thousand years from now, people thinking we all acted and behaved as Trump would want us to because all they had to go on were his tweets (which through the miraculous process of positing a USB into one of those “time capsules” popular in the not so distant past, had been found by ” Cassandra” in a act of religious fervour and to prove indeed it was devine intervention, the USB fired up and the information downloaded).

Not exactly “solid foundations”.

In fact, if you have ever read Prof Huttons “Blood & Mistletoe”, all 422 pages plus notes and bibliography, ( I have) you may well come away from it wondering “How on Earth are there still Druids today?”.

Logically they should just be a footnote in history.

When I moved away from Druidry for a period of my life, one of the things I wanted to do was to try to establish, through academic information, actual practices and processes our ancestors may have used. I wanted to do something that I considered may be based more in actual fact and not speculation. I concluded that the best way to honour my ancestors was to create a ritual / practice based on best current academic evidence, it would give me more of the “solid foundations” I had failed to find in modern Druidry.

If I used this more “credit worthy” approach, then surely my practice would be “better appreciated” by those ancestors I was honouring. My rituals / practices would be more “recognisable” to them and, possibly, create the ” right way” to interact.

Problem was, for me, turns out they weren’t arsed about such things.

Modern science and academic study may give us more credible evidence of the artifacts and the physical surroundings experienced by our ancestors, but it can’t give us the emotional context. It also can’t confirm with any degree of certainty, whether they actually worked for our ancestors in the context posited by the academic studies. We could be trying to contact them by betamax in the age of the download.

More foundations built on sand. The approach was as unsatisfactory as the practices I had witnessed previously from the Druid community that had resulted in me leaving for that period.

So, why am I writing this today self identifying as a modern Druid based on such flimsy evidence? Surely no one could possibly know what Druids today would be doing?

Well, I am in this position today because the Other than Human communities I work with (being animist) have created the circumstances needed for my identification as “Druid” to come about. I didn’t even think of myself as such, until the word was planted into my being by those communities.

Now, before I go on, I realise a lot of Druids expend a lot of time and even financial outlay from well known orders in attaining their Druid grade (and that is not be construed as some sort of criticism of either them or the orders they associate with) .

Let me just make clear here, I am not and do not speak for all Druids. Indeed, with my work with the IFN UK, I am always at pains to clarify this very point. My Druid viewpoint is framed in the Foreword to the Constitution of The Druid Network and that is because, for me, it is the nearest definition of what I experience that has been written to date.

Before the other than human communities decided I should become a Druid, I wasn’t, and yet since they decided that I should be and let me know, I have found myself through circumstances I had no control or conscious say in, now trustee, treasurer and the first Druid to sit at IFN in their history ( that may sound like I was an unwilling partner, I wasn’t as such though I always exercise caution but I have worked with those communities long enough to have trust in them and how they work because of the long list of positive results that have built up with me over the years).

So my point is that for me, my Druid identity originated “outwith” and not through some uninterrupted line of lineage. The fact that the title was given to me from other than humans strongly suggests, at least some of those non physical communities wish it ( being a Druid) to be realised now, without wanting to make that sound like I am some sort of “special chosen one”, I’m very much not.

My Druidry creates the conditions for me to experience the divine aspect of life through the lens of nature, it is both my identity and the set of tools to experience this.  It just happens to be relevent in this particular part of human history.