Druidism ...

[RubyRose]

Now, I've been doing a little research, you know just for my own personal learning and even though I'm happy right where I am in my little wiccan bubble.

This has been bothering me,....

I noticed, that they're are a lot of sub druidism sects, celtic druidism, neo druidism, catholic druidism to name a few ... I'm just wondering, if there's any real difference. I mean, I've heard tales of how Merlin was a druid ... could anyone break down, Druidism for me, in a more simplistic way, you know like what are the belief strutures, why is Wicca or Paganism different from Druidism ... that said, any help would be wonderful. I'm wanting to understand it more. It's seems to be important on this forum, where other forums, just over look this religion in favour of witchcraft, paganism and wicca ...

Just incase, I included the link from where I based my views and confusion ...
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=what+is+druidism&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

[Morgandria]

Wicca vs. Neocelts (Reconstructionists)
This was written by Lugaid and is agreed upon by most Neocelts.

Wicca has no significant apparent connection with Celtic traditions. It *may* have some connection with North Italian folk traditions, but there is very little evidence for this.

Wicca has several theological conflicts with Celtic tradition, which, taken together, form a severe dissonance between the two religions.

1) Wicca assigns the sun to a male deity, the moon to a female. Celtic religion is less positive of the genders of the two. (There is a moongod, and references in the Carmina Gadelica to a female moon. There is a [possible] sun goddess, and references in the CG to a male sun.)

2) Wicca is (originally and primarily) duotheistic. Celtic religion is polytheistic/animistic.

3) Wicca has a "harm none" morality. This is not true of Celtic religion, which has a "heroic" morality. (My terms: "harm none" is typified by the stated moralities of Wicca, Xianity, Hinduism , etc. where the primary imperative is to not hurt others. "Heroic" is typified by Celtic and Norse religions primarily, though other examples exist. "Heroic" morality is summed up by Diogenes Laertius as the teaching that"the gods must be worshipped, and no evil done, and manly behavior maintained", and by the hero Caelte as "truth in our hearts, strength in our arms and fulfillment in our tongues". "Heroic" morality is rooted in concepts of personal honor.)

4) Wicca has a limited conceptualization of the otherworld. Celtic religion has a complex and intricate conceptualization of the otherworld, and in fact, the otherworld (or, more specifically, its interaction with the mundane world) is in many ways central to the Celtic religion.

5) Wicca is primarily an invocatory/ecstatic religion. In Celtic religion, these experiences are secondary to ritual and morality.

6) Wicca creates sacred space. Celtic religion finds and demarcates sacred space, or, alternately, sees sacred space as omnipresent. (Note: this distinction is subject to debate, and I am not certain that it is universal. I include it because it is a difference I have seen in my [admittedly limited] experience of Wicca.)

7) Wicca is an initiatory religion. Celtic religion is inclusive, with initiatory elements. (Note: this *could* indicate that Wicca was an initiatory segment of Celtic religion, but I do not believe so, based on all of the other differences.)

8) Wicca uses the classical elements as a fundamental concept. Celtic religion does not seem to use the classical elements in any significant fashion, and does not seem to have any direct parallel to the Wiccan use of those elements (though the internal Cauldrons may have some significance here...)

9) Wicca places little emphasis on mythology. Mythological stories are absolutely central to Celtic religion, forming the core of magickal practice, ritual and teaching.

[Seamus MacNemi]

Druidism is the original spiritual path of the ancient Celts. The term Druid was coined from two ancient word roots: Dwr; the eternel or everlasting, and Vid; to see or to seek. In this sense, there are porbably many paths that might legitimately call themselves Druidic within a very narrow frame of reference.
If you truly wish to learn more about Druidism and Druids I suggest you try the websight " druidry.org "and take their Bardic course. You'll find it everything that you might desire.

:cheers:
.

[RubyRose]

Thanks guys! I'll check it out further in detail later, as I have to get off the class now ... it looks to be just what I'm after.

[Seamus MacNemi]

Smilies: When words cannot express your thoughts.

:cheers:

[Siarlas]

RR, think of it like this. Druidry is more of a philosophy. That's why there are all the different druids that you mentioned.
A person can have Christianity as their religion while still being a druid.

[Seamus MacNemi]

:hmmmmm:
I don't consider Druidism to be a mere philosophy. Rather, for me, it is a world view and a way of being in the world.
From my point, I see that there is :

One sky above me
One earth beneath my feet
One sea of air surrounding
:lol: and One breath of life within
Humanity is One kind
upon the face of the earth
and there is One Law which governs
the affairs of all men

THE Law is the Law of Reciprocity: Everthing in life
is an exchange of values for the enhancement
and continuation of life

I think that most people who think about it will agree with me.

[RubyRose]

One sky above me
One earth beneath my feet
One sea of air surrounding
and One breath of life within
Humanity is One kind
upon the face of the earth
and there is One Law which governs
the affairs of all men

THE Law is the Law of Reciprocity: Everthing in life
is an exchange of values for the enhancement
and continuation of life


Nice way of putting it ...

[Seamus MacNemi]

:chattin:
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy my work. That's what it's all about after all. It's amazing how simple the Ancient Wisdom is, none of the gobbltigook and metaphysical hocuspocus that you usually get from a lot of so called "Teachers". Just straight forward matter of fact realism. That's what I love about Druidism, it doesn't try to pull the wool over your eyes, but it will insist that you look with your own eyes and come to your own conclcusions. And then you have to restate the truths you find in your own words as simple and as elegantly as you are able

:lol:

[RubyRose]

:chattin:
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy my work. That's what it's all about after all. It's amazing how simple the Ancient Wisdom is, none of the gobbltigook and metaphysical hocuspocus that you usually get from a lot of so called "Teachers". Just straight forward matter of fact realism. That's what I love about Druidism, it doesn't try to pull the wool over your eyes, but it will insist that you look with your own eyes and come to your own conclcusions. And then you have to restate the truths you find in your own words as simple and as elegantly as you are able

:lol:

Yeah, I looked breifly at Druidism when I was starting out, my it wasn't really my niche, though I do enjoy the history of merlin and the round table and all ... just not so much the praticing and the ways of Druidry ...

[Seamus MacNemi]

:broomride:
I take it you must be Wiccan. My ex wife felt much the same way
She started a Dianic Coven up in Rhode Island just shortly after we were ddivorced which is pretty wild considering she was a Born Again Christian when we started going together. I guess I've managed to have some positive effect on the people I've met.
:rollingla:

[RubyRose]

Yeah I'm Wiccan, and I don't have anything against people who practice Druidism or is that Druidry ... anyway ... it just wasn't for me ...

[Seamus MacNemi]

Hey, that's OK. To each his/her own. like I said, My wife felt the same as you. She had her own experience with the Goddess one evening when she went for a walk on the beach and it changed her outlook drastically.
Overnight she went from a Born Again Christian to a Dianic Wiccan. I guess that was just below the surface of her being waiting to come out
::lol:

[RubyRose]

Yeah probably

[Seamus MacNemi]

As in what? :dontknow:

[RubyRose]

:lol:

That comment was in response to
I guess that was just below the surface of her being waiting to come out


I didn't mean any disrespect ...

[Seamus MacNemi]

I didn't take it that way. But some how I had the funny feeling that this particular thread was in danger of becomming unravelled. I think that I was losing my focus. What are discussing here anyway? Is it the differences between Wicca and Druidism or is there some other point that you wish to make? I'm open to most any thing, but I just want to know what it is we're talking about.
Certainly there are differences, but there are also similarities and common points that we can both agree upon. It is the common points that I wish to emphasize.
That we are two different people is obvious. But we are both human and we both have very human needs and feelings. This fact cannot be at any point discounted. Who we are in the world depends largely upon our individual family histories and backgrounds, our world view based upon our experinces in living and growing up in the world. Our particular expression of who we are is totally a matter of the way in which we have learned to interpret the world around us. No two people can have an exactly duplicate set of experiences no matter how otherwise similar they might be. Even in my own family there are vast differences between the way that I think and act and the way in which my brother
thinks and acts. My mother has an entirely different way of relating than do either I or my brother.
I come from a rather unique background. I am both Irish and Jewish and I have the advantage of being taught in both traditions. I have had the same experience in living and growing up in the world as both an Irishman and a Jew. I know both the Holocaust and the Potatoe Famine and I have met ignorance and prejudice in others as both an Irishman and a Jew. And I have found no difference in my experience of these things. these attitudes, whether I view them as an Irishman or a Jew.
That, in my mind, says something about the human condition.
I was born in 1943, amidst the process of a terrible war. Mine is a Phoenix Generation, our inheritance was blood and ashes. It was our mission from the beginning to take the blood and the ashes and make bricks and mortar and to rebuild the edifice of our humanity. This is what the entirety of my life has been about from the time that I was a child.
Certainly, I do not expect you or any one else to be able to percieve the world as I do. In order to do that, you would have to become me and that you cannot do no matter how you might try. But as well, I cannot become you and it would be ridiculous for you to expect me to do so. But, that is so much of what the efforts of the various Evangelists have been about, to melt us all down into amorphus and indistinguishable blobs. It makes little difference whether they were selling Christianity or some form of New Paganism like the Nazis in Germany.
I am not an evangelist and I do not believe in "PUSHING" my religion. I believe the whole notion of "CONVERSION" to be ridiculous in the first instance. You cannot make a person into something which thay are not to begin with. That is the position I held when I first met my second wife
although she was absolutely convinced at time that she could "Win Me For Christ". What happened was that She was the one who was "Converted". And it was not " I " who did the converting. What really happened was that she discovered for the first time the mystery of her own femininity. She "BECAME" a woman in her own right.
I don't know, but I strongly suspect that a similar experience brought you into Wicca. Please tell me if I am wrong in that.

:lol:

[RubyRose]

What brought me to Wicca!? Well I've always been an Athiest. I never believed that God existed, and wasn't too keen on the way people went about (mainly at Christmas) and advertised, Christianity and Jesus.

I did, however believe that they're must be something out there, but didn't have a clue what. I somehow stumbled across Paganism, and the like, through my long time boyfriend and now fiancee, Rhyce.

Who had an interest in it, but kept it from me, for a long time. That sparked my interest, but it was only in the beginning that I began to fully explore Paganism, and found that it suited me.

[Slasint]

Druids are one of the Universe. They harnest and protect the earth and in return the earth helps them..or us. We are protectors of the earth. And in return we have help from the earth. In humanly forms of magic, or knowledge as some may say. There is a deep history to the ancient druids. The ancient druids were a lot diffrent from the the new druids that pronounce themselves druids today. There are also a lot of fake druids. People that read certain books on druid and all the sudden pronounce themselves druids. I was born into druidry. In Connacht Ireland. Through the order of the Tuatha De Danaans. It is a knowledge taught semptait. The Tuatha De Danaans were the first order of Gods to reign to ireland. With them they brought four druids whom taught them their magics and science and all of the knowledge. And the druids have continued the path. Im a knight of the Tuatha De Danaan, or a Druid of the Tuatha De Danaan so if any one has questions just ask. I cant tell you everything but i can help you.

[Seamus MacNemi]

:damnpc: :fpcsucks: :damnpc: :fpcsucks: :damnpc: :fpcsucks: :damnpc:
I already made one reply to your posting but my #%**+@$!!!?? computer blew it all out in transmission. So now I'll have to try to recreate everything that I posted. :flamer:

[RubyRose]

Okay

[Seamus MacNemi]

Sorry about that last bit. This machine sometimes has a mind of its own.
I was trying to rekindle the line I had going this morning, but I can't seem to relight the fire, so I'm going to have to start all over again.
I was thinking about my own entry into Druidism. At some points it seems inevitable, prehaps it was always a part of me to begin with. When I think of the family I grew up in, educated, intellectual, world traveled and involved in all manner of interests from politics to art, music and theater the conclusion is inescapable. My mother had me listening to Tchaikovsky and Motzart as well as Russian and Irish folk music before I was even in the first grade. Nearly every member of my family is a musician of some sort. I used to play Classical and Flamenco guitar as well as piano. We all could paint and draw and our evening dinner table was always abuzz with events and world afairs.
My uncle Laurence was a physicist working for the Fermi lab and he always had some gimic he was working on to investigate the workings of the world around us. Every day was a new discovery and a new mystery so you might say I was primed from infancy.
My curiousity was never thwarted the way it is in some families. I could ask any question and get a reasonable answer even if it was an honest admission of ignorance in some matter. I was never put down for my questioning.
I guess you could say that my world view today is Judeo/Druidic. Though when I was younger I wanted to be a Rabbi. The idea just seemed to fit my personality. I have always liked people and enjoyed helping others. As well, I was driven by an internal need to find some way of explaining the world around me to myself at least. I needed an explanation for practical reasons more than any thing else. I just could not comprehend that there were people who hated and wanted to kill me just for the simple fact that I existed. I could never grasp the idea that there were superior and inferior races of human beings. When I looked around, all I could see was humanity as an entity. I have always jugded people as individuals regardless of their family or cultural or religious backgrounds.
I could never stomach the deification of mere mortals. The whole idea runs against the grain of my thinking and upbringing. That's probably why I never became a Christian. I could never think of Jesus as a God.
That He was a Shaman I have no doubt but the idea of worshiping him
or praying in "HIS" name sickens me. As well does the idea that "HE"
died for my sins. I don't make a very good follower.
Druidism provides me with a lens through which I can view the world and myself in practical terms. It provides me with a language with which
I can speak to the world and be understood. And more than anything else, it provides me with a gate into myself and a means of connecting to the world and my fellow human beings. :reading:

[RubyRose]

Sorry about that last bit. This machine sometimes has a mind of its own.
I was trying to rekindle the line I had going this morning, but I can't seem to relight the fire, so I'm going to have to start all over again.
I was thinking about my own entry into Druidism. At some points it seems inevitable, prehaps it was always a part of me to begin with. When I think of the family I grew up in, educated, intellectual, world traveled and involved in all manner of interests from politics to art, music and theater the conclusion is inescapable. My mother had me listening to Tchaikovsky and Motzart as well as Russian and Irish folk music before I was even in the first grade. Nearly every member of my family is a musician of some sort. I used to play Classical and Flamenco guitar as well as piano. We all could paint and draw and our evening dinner table was always abuzz with events and world afairs.
My uncle Laurence was a physicist working for the Fermi lab and he always had some gimic he was working on to investigate the workings of the world around us. Every day was a new discovery and a new mystery so you might say I was primed from infancy.
My curiousity was never thwarted the way it is in some families. I could ask any question and get a reasonable answer even if it was an honest admission of ignorance in some matter. I was never put down for my questioning.
I guess you could say that my world view today is Judeo/Druidic. Though when I was younger I wanted to be a Rabbi. The idea just seemed to fit my personality. I have always liked people and enjoyed helping others. As well, I was driven by an internal need to find some way of explaining the world around me to myself at least. I needed an explanation for practical reasons more than any thing else. I just could not comprehend that there were people who hated and wanted to kill me just for the simple fact that I existed. I could never grasp the idea that there were superior and inferior races of human beings. When I looked around, all I could see was humanity as an entity. I have always jugded people as individuals regardless of their family or cultural or religious backgrounds.
I could never stomach the deification of mere mortals. The whole idea runs against the grain of my thinking and upbringing. That's probably why I never became a Christian. I could never think of Jesus as a God.
That He was a Shaman I have no doubt but the idea of worshiping him
or praying in "HIS" name sickens me. As well does the idea that "HE"
died for my sins. I don't make a very good follower.
Druidism provides me with a lens through which I can view the world and myself in practical terms. It provides me with a language with which
I can speak to the world and be understood. And more than anything else, it provides me with a gate into myself and a means of connecting to the world and my fellow human beings. :reading:

I can't help but relate to your view on Jesus, and the way some people can accept that "HE" died for all our sins. Now not to totally put down Christians and their beleifs but, I just can't accept it. If you sin, you sin.Simple. But what is sin? Really, I mean everybody has their own opinions, and everybody has their own interpretation of the Bible. I myself, dislike it when overly religious people, try to tell me that I SHOULD believe in Jesus, because HE died for me and my sins. I don't go around telling them that they SHOULD be Pagan, so why should THEY try and tell me I SHOULD be of the Christian faith. It works two ways. If we as Pagan's can let the Christian's be, why can they just let us be? Without condemning us of a lifetime of eternal hell because of what he believe? Just food for thought. :lol:

[Seamus MacNemi]

Actually. sin is a Greek achery term meaning "to miss the mark". And that we often do in our questing in life. But that does not mean that that we are essentially flawed in our being. All that means is that we must learn to live in the world as human beings..
The whole idea of "Original Sin" is an idea coined totally by that so called "Saint" Augustine as a politically motivated psychological weapon.
It has absolutely no basis in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus. As I said, Jesus was a shamman and probably a pretty good one for his time.
But that does not make him a god. And, the laws and customs under which he was educated and grew up absolutely prohibited him from making any such claim. He was deified by the Greeks and Romans who followed him long after his death. Those very same people who condemned the Jews for their stubbornness in refusing to accept him
as their God. Both Alexander "The Great" and Caesar wanted to be worshipped as gods, but we would not worship them either and they hated us for it. And the whole basis for "Antisemitism" is lodged in this, their original complaint, that in their eyes, we were an irreligious and balsphemous people. Sort of like the Christian view of Pagans, don't you think?
Personally, I think that any man who begins to concieve of himself as a God should be taken out and shot. He has become a danger both to himself and to others. :uzi: :uhhhhh:

[Aldrick]

Actually. sin is a Greek achery term meaning "to miss the mark". And that we often do in our questing in life. But that does not mean that that we are essentially flawed in our being. All that means is that we must learn to live in the world as human beings..
The whole idea of "Original Sin" is an idea coined totally by that so called "Saint" Augustine as a politically motivated psychological weapon.
It has absolutely no basis in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus. As I said, Jesus was a shamman and probably a pretty good one for his time.
But that does not make him a god. And, the laws and customs under which he was educated and grew up absolutely prohibited him from making any such claim. He was deified by the Greeks and Romans who followed him long after his death. Those very same people who condemned the Jews for their stubbornness in refusing to accept him
as their God. Both Alexander "The Great" and Caesar wanted to be worshipped as gods, but we would not worship them either and they hated us for it. And the whole basis for "Antisemitism" is lodged in this, their original complaint, that in their eyes, we were an irreligious and balsphemous people. Sort of like the Christian view of Pagans, don't you think?
Personally, I think that any man who begins to concieve of himself as a God should be taken out and shot. He has become a danger both to himself and to others. :uzi: :uhhhhh:


Well 'said'. Well 'said' indeed.

[Seamus MacNemi]

:reading: I'm glad you like my work. Thanks

[Seamus MacNemi]

:fpraiseyo:
I reach with my mind
into the formless void
and drawing forth threads of possibility
I weave knots of probability
into the patterns of actuality
The Unknown
is the closest of my companions
The Void
my most intimate of freinds
I dwell in harmony with Chaos

:vanish: