| Re: Real magic seven part one, patterns of ritual |
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Group: alt.magick · Group Profile
Author: TomTom Date: Jul 18, 2008 08:22
"Searles O'Dubhain" wrote in message
news:Hs2dnYTEJoeF4B3VnZ2dnUVZ_tHinZ2d@comcast.com...>
>
> It does appear that discussing Druidry with you is useless if word games
> and semantics are going to be the substance of the matter. Bandying words
> about is merely painting pictures with symbols that have varying meanings
> in the best of times. When one's goal is to achieve understanding, then
> the effort of achieving a synchronization of thoughts using words is worth
> the time and trouble. However, on Usenet especially, I've learned that if
> one's intention and spirit are to not achieve a union of ideas or an
> accumulation of wisdom, then no amount of effort will achieve any success
> in communicating ideas between folks with orthogonally vectored thinking.
Then it would behoove you to be specific about the issue at hand instead of
spending all your time complaining that I am using words to disagree with
the claim that modern "Druidry" is somehow "useful". I don't see any
practical value to it. It does have some rather impractical uses, of
course. All delusions have a purpose, even when that purpose is only to
make the person being deluded feel special. There is nothing in the vaguely
newage doctrines of modern "Druids" that in any way separates it from any of
the other neo-pagan paleo-simulations. I've even heard some "Druid
scholars" declare that the word "druid" itself means "wise one". Sound
familiar? Google "Wicca". They say *exactly* the same thing about *their*
synthetic reconstruction of what they imagined about pre-christian Celtic
religion.
The only difference between "Druidry", "Wicca", and any other newage pagan
group is window dressing.
> What is known about pre-Roman Druidry is meager but increasing with new
> archaeological discoveries and the ongoing reconstruction of Gaulish and
> Iberian languages. Much more is known about Druidry from Irish, Welsh and
> Scottish sources where Druids and Druids survived Roman invasion (in the
> case of Wales and parts of what is now Scotland) and Roman influences in
> Ireland.
Druidry did not survive in any of those places for long. By the end of the
1st century CE, it was gone. Only 18 centuries later did romantic
revisionists decide that Druids were peaceful poets, singers, and healers.
At the time, they were seen in a quite different light.
From Caesar's "Gallic Wars":
"The whole nation of the Gauls is greatly devoted to ritual observances, and
for that reason those who are smitten with the more grievous maladies and
who are engaged in the perils of battle either sacrifice human victims or
vow so to do, employing the druids as ministers for such sacrifices. They
believe, in effect, that, unless for a man's life a man's life be paid, the
majesty of the immortal gods may not be appeased; and in public, as in
private life they observe an ordinance of sacrifices of the same kind.
Others use figures of immense size whose limbs, woven out of twigs, they
fill with living men and set on fire, and the men perish in a sheet of
flame. They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the
act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods;
but when the supply of such fails they resort to the execution even of the
innocent."
Ah the joy of romanticism! Bloody barbarism becomes a wonderful Eden-like
paradise if only one will look only through rose-colored glasses.
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