Who and What are Druids

Who and What are Druids?



The Druids are more of a class than a society or religion. The existence of druidism is probably much older than anything we have uncovered in recorded history. Much of the oldest sources of records come from Roman historians. Rome and its historians did more to slander and propagandize against the druids as a method of conquering new lands.



From the Celtic perspective Druid was a distinction given to knowledgeable or wise men and women. Druids were considered to have oak knowledge or oak wisdom, as was the distinction of the name druid. There is a debate as to whether they where solely an indigenous Celtic People or rather a class of seers and intellectuals that were known in other cultures by other names. I prefer to see it as the later.



Of historical accounts we know the druids considered the oak and mistletoe to be sacred. They understood that a symbiotic relationship existed between the two plants, and some have associates mans dependence upon the earth to be a similar relationship. So sacred was the oak that many groves of oak trees where pruned and maintained by the druids. There were universities of the druids, places where students from all over the world came to learn. Often those universites were made in close connection to the sacred groves.



But so little is actually know of the druids that many have filled the gaps. Thanks to the Romans, that sought to destroy all knowledge of this class of druids, we have only their biased writings that probably tell a complete mistruth rather than a reality of the druid class.



Much of what is known today is drawn from knowledge passed down from teacher and from heredity knowledge. A few have been able to access akashic records and have been given direction from input. The rites of the Masons and other old secret societies have stored some records of the druids. Archeologists are slowly unearthing other records but there is a tendency towards the findings being biased. One such finding is the suggestion that druids conducted human sacrifice, this rumor was establishing by the Romans during their time of anti-propaganda while they destroyed every relic they could find of the druid culture.



H.P. Blavatsky brings together some understanding about the druids. How they were connected to the ancient cultures.



Quote for the Veil of Isis

By H.P. Blavatsky



http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_isisunveiled.htm



"The Druids of Great Britain practised it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to the "wisdom"** of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees, -- the Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all -- the immortality of the soul.*** Into their sacred groves -- natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible Architect -- the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight to learn about what man once was and what he will be.**** They needed no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault.*****"


"On the dead soil of the long by-gone past stand their sacred oaks, now dried up and stripped of their spiritual meaning by the venomous breath of materialism. But for the student of occult learning, their vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as full of deep and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed his magical cures, and waving the branch of mistletoe, severed with his golden sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. Magic is as old as man."



The Veil of Isis also draws a relationship between the ancient Egyptians, Masons, and the Druids here:
http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_readeveilofisis28.htm





But with that being established, I would like to expand upon the possibilities of who the druids really were. We know from the intermingling of druids with many different tribes or cultures of people that it was not a religion but a way of thinking. The Druid path is more about being on A path rather than the path itself. Druids were the judges, lawmakers, teachers, and most of all mans connection to nature. For the Druid it is about adapting yet respecting on a holy level the environment we live in. It is about living in balance with nature. And when that balance is achieved we both (man and nature) can receive benefit from the other.


Many theories have come out that Atlantis upon the destruction had survivors that moved out to other cultures and brought with them their knowledge. Some have dated the ancient pyramids of Egypt to be about 12,000 years old. Mayan, Cambodian, and Egyptian pyramids all are technologically advanced for the peoples of the time. The Mayan codices point to the 5 Ages, or period pointing to the possibility of other civilizations before our own. Draw a conclusion for yourself, were there civilizations prior to what we know today of recorded history?


Consider that the possibility is that the original druids were refugees from Atlantis. Realizing their mistakes and imbalance with nature they spread out teaching a new message to mankind. The message of the druids is to live in harmony with your environment. Yet we seem to move down that same path of destruction yet once again.



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