Another tattoo is of Red Sonja, the heroine of the sword-and-sorcery Marvel comic book. To Bailey, the red-haired warrior epitomizes the Morrigan, a Celtic goddess linked to the cycle of birth and death.
Red Sonja speaks to Bailey, an aviation worker, Army veteran, historian — and druid. Bailey is a 21st century druid. Druids are steeped in over two millennia of history, originating with the elites and the educated among the Celts, an Indo-European people.
Modern druid practices are tamer, reincarnation is debated and human and animal sacrifices are forbidden. But modern practitioners still have much in common with their ancestors, including such traditions as ceremonies, rituals and an emphasis on education. Druidry is not as structured as Christianity, Islam, Judiaism and other religions.
It does not hold to strict dogma, there is no universal sacred text, like the Bible or the Quran, and believers do not meet for weekly services. Most of what is known about ancient druids came from secondhand sources, including the Romans, who conquered the Celts in Britain in the first century A. It also is a niche group compared with other organized religious or spiritual groups. Information on the exact number of druids in the U. The majority of participants in this survey — more than 76 percent — identified as Christian.
Bailey has been a member of the Grove of the Rising Phoenix, an Arizona group of druids, since At that point, both sides will decide whether they are a good fit for each other. More than likely when you hear the word Druid , you conjure up an image of an old man with a beard dressed in robes dancing among trees. However, this modern idea of Druids is not as accurate as one might think. Some common misconceptions of the Druid practice are that the Druids worshipped trees, engaged in frequent human sacrifice, and are no longer around today.
However, all of these ideas are myths. The original Druid culture flourished around the same time as Julius Caesar. Because there was no written history of the Druids before this time, it is hard to know their exact origin.
Luckily, during this time period their roles in society were well-marked. There were three different groups of peoples that would later be conflated into the category of Druids.
These groups were the Bards, singers and poets of the Celtic Iron Age; the Vates, priests and scholars of nature; and finally the Druids, studiers of nature and the judges and judiciaries of the ancient tribes.
As time marched on and vague documentation of the Vates, Bards, and Druids continued, the Druid practices would be confused with those belonging to the Bards and Vates. In the ancient society, each branch had their own role to play among the people in the area.
From about 50 B. Gaul was an ancient land comprised of modern day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, as well as parts of Switzerland, Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. The Gaulish people were comprised of several tribes that were constantly at war.
In this society, tribes used Vates, or Vatis singular , to host funerals and ceremonies to bless the people, while Druids were looked up to and held to a much higher standard. It is said that a Druid Priest could walk between two warring tribes and each side would lay down their arms out of respect. It was in Britain where the Druids were recently officially recognized as a religion. Much like the Vates, Druids were students of Nature, only on a much broader scale.
The Druids believed that there was a balance to everything, and that it was necessary to maintain it, a key feature that the contemporary Druids have made sure to maintain. We can see a difference between the two groups in reference to the ancient judicial system. This renders some of their accounts historically uncertain, as they may be tainted with exaggerated examples of Druidic practices.
Druidic human sacrifice was recorded but there is no definitive evidence to support this. Within the Druid class, it is believed that there were subsections, all with colour-coded robes. The eldest Druid, or one deemed to be the most wise, was the Arch-druid, and would wear gold robes. The ordinary Druids would wear white and act as priests.
The Sacrificers would fight and wear red. The blue Bards were artistic, and the new recruits to Druidism completed lesser tasks and were held in lesser esteem, wearing brown or black. They observed lunar, solar and seasonal cycles and worshipped according to these on 8 main holy days. This was when the last harvest would take place and it was a day full of mysticism and spirituality because the living and the deceased were the closest to being revealed to each other than on any other day.
Yule was the winter solstice, a time when Druids would sit on mounds of earth, for example at New Grange in Ireland, throughout the night, waiting for sunrise, when they would be reborn!
Ostara was the spring equinox, and Beltane took place on 30th April as a festival of fertility. Lughnasa was the first harvest on 2nd August and Mabon was the autumnal equinox.
Then the cycle of holy days would repeat itself again, reflecting the cycles of nature, planets and indeed life itself, as the Druids believed in reincarnation. They also believed that sins committed in a previous life could be made up for in the next. Probably the most famous stone circle in Britain is Stonehenge, an ancient megalithic monument dating back to about B.
In part, this was likely due to the fact that Celtic women held a much higher social status than their Greek or Roman counterparts, and so writers like Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Tacitus wrote about the baffling societal role of these Celtic women. When most people hear the word Druid today, they think of old men with long beards, wearing robes and frolicking around Stonehenge. However, the modern Druid movement is a bit different from that.
Although the word Druid conjures up visions of Celtic Reconstructionism to many people, ADF welcomes members of any religious path within the Indo-European spectrum.
ADF was founded by Isaac Bonewits , and is divided into semi-autonomous local groups known as groves. Although ADF accepts membership applications from everyone, allowing them to become a Dedicant, a significant amount of work is required to advance to the title of Druid. It was inspired by the accounts of ancient Druids, and drew on the work of historical researchers, folklorists and early literature. Although some Wiccans are also Druids — because there are some overlapping similarities between the two belief systems and therefore the groups are not mutually exclusive — most Druids are not Wiccan.
In addition to the above mentioned groups, and other Druidic traditions, there are also solitary practitioners who self-identify as Druids. Seamus mac Owain, a Druid from Columbia, SC, says, "There's not a lot of written material about the Druids, so much of what we do is based upon Celtic myth and legend, as well as scholarly information that has been provided by anthropologists, historians, and so forth.
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