I was telling my dad about The Wicker Man, and he said that the religion that they followed sounded more like Druidry than Paganism. He explained that Druidry followed Celtic traditions. I was very confused, so I decided to do some research. I found the most straight forward source that I could, which happened to be The Pagan Federation: http://paganfed.org/index.shtml.
It turns out that Druidry is a branch of Paganism. Paganism is a very broad term that describes "a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion." Paganism has a lot of different branches, such as Druidry, Wicca, Shamanism, and Heathenry, which includes Norse, Northern, Odinism, Asatru, and Vanatru. There was so much information on this website that I couldn't read it all, so I just decided to research Druidry and save the rest of them for another day. I found a very interesting passage on the Druidry page:
'O knowledgeable lad, whose son are you?'
‘I am the son of Poetry
Poetry, son of scrutiny
Scrutiny, son of meditation
Meditation, son of lore
Lore, son of enquiry
Enquiry, son of investigation
Investigation, son of great knowledge
Great knowledge, son of great sense
Great sense, son of understanding
Understanding, son of wisdom
Wisdom, son of the triple Gods of poetry.’
(Colloquy of the Two Sages- Celtic Traditional)
This passage, I feel, represents the belief in the connections and the circle of life that was represented in The Wicker Man. I definitely suggest that anyone who is interested in the branches of Paganism visit the website,
http://paganfed.org/index.shtml.
This is very interesting to me, personally, as druids figure significantly into Irish mythology-history, as do other Celtic pagans.I'm kind of confused, actually; in pre-Christian Ireland, Druidry wasn't a religion. Druids were people, a sort of laid-back shaman-priests who supposedly talked to trees and conferred with the spirits. (Druids are the inspiration for Hiberno-British wizards, for those of you unaware.) Roman historians tell us that Druids practiced human sacrifice, and there is some evidence to support it; but said evidence originates from Britain and France. As for Ireland, we think that it was the pagan masses, not so much the Druids themselves, that committed these acts, but we have no way of knowing. The interesting thing is that Druids actually survived long after the rest of the pagans in Ireland; when the Milesian Gaels (the "Black Irish") adopted Christianity, the members of the other races in Ireland (and there were several) had two options: convert or die. Many of them opted for the latter, and the Milesians were only too happy to oblige. The Druids basically said, "Hell no and hell no," and retreated into the wilderness. Accounts of peaceful Druids exist in Ireland up into the beginning of the second millennium A.D., at which point they vanished. What happened to them, no one knows. Any number of people - the Vikings, the Normans, even the Irish - would have wanted them out of the way.
ReplyDeleteAh, Irish philosophy: "If they're not from here, kill 'em. If they're from here and they're different, kill 'em too." A small part of me is surprised by this; the larger part of me, the Irish part, simply laughs at that small part. What I'm getting at is that Ireland's a pretty unique place.