— Tim Hawkins ( talk)
Ériu,
Fotla and
Banba, the goddesses of Irish sovereignty, are three sisters.
[1]
![]() | |
Founded | |
---|---|
October 23rd, 4004 BC | |
Reformed | |
May 4th, AD 1985 | |
Location | |
California and Baja California Norte y Sur | |
Patron Tree | |
California Live Oak | |
Tribes | |
5 | |
Scriptures | |
Leabhar de Chineál (The Book of Nature) | |
Website | |
AmDruids.org | |
The American Reformed* Irish Druids (AR*ID) are an animistic, reconstructionist, pagan sect in California. Ecclesitically they celebrate oral rendition of Irish myths; their goal is to practice paganry as it was in pre-Christian Ireland, as reformed*; and they are humor [2], social, and culture oriented. Their Reformation* was on Beltaine, 4 May, 1985. The asterisk is part of their name and refers to their 1 reform.*
* NO human sacrifices!
The AR*ID sect is inexclusive, that is members may concurrently follow other religious or spiritual traditions. They accept non-literal belief in myths and mythic characters. [3]
Irish mythology does not have a creation myth. It begins instead with a series of invasions, described in The Book of Invasions. The last invasion being the Milesians [4], the sons of Míl, Irish human mortals, who agreed to share their world with the " Good Neighbors", the People of Fairy, made up of the Irish pagan deities and mythic characters, and also every natural thing named, from individual rocks and trees, to geographic features such as wells, lakes and rivers, to mountains, plains and provinces, and even Ireland herself, plus a seemingly endless parade of other Fairy Folk that includes leprechauns, banshees, mermaids, pookas, and so on and on. Add to this the ancient Irish tradition of ancestor worship that adds the spirits of the dead to the landscape. Lady Gregory wrote "I believe that if Christianity could be blotted out and forgotten tomorrow, our people would not be moved at all from a belief in a spiritual world ..." [5]
Nature is a central element of Celtic paganry. [6] Several of the mythic characters were shape shifters, as familiar in animal form as human, such as the Morrígan as a crow. A number of animals are important thematic elements in different mythic tales, such as the boar, swans, salmon and, centrally, the stag and cattle. [7] Images of the antlered figured referred to as Cernunnos show him surrounded by animals.
The belief in places as Fairy Folk can be seen in the Dinnshenchas, the Irish onomastic mythology of place names. [8] Water — wells, springs, bogs, lakes, rivers, and so on — are of special importance in Irish pagan myth and practice, in part because water is believed to be a link to the Otherworld. [9] For example, the River Shannon (an tSionna in Old Irish Gaelic) and the goddess Sionna are believed to be one person.
Strabo on "oak sanctuary". [10]
Sacred Grove. [11]
Oak. [12]
Druidry's pre-historic origins are lost in the mists of time; the AR*ID sect's reformation was in AD 1985. They have been inspired by the early Quaker's aim to re-instate primitive Christianity [13], and set as their goal to recreate, as much as possible, the druidism of Ireland before Saint Patrick.
According to Irish mythology the Tuatha Dé Danann (the Tribe of Danu) invaded Ireland on a Bealtaine (about May 1st), in an unknowable year, and eventually defeated the previous invaders, the Fir Bolg people and the Fomorians, to dominate the island. {citation needed} They and their families became the principal members of the aes sídhe (the fairy folk). The AR*ID sect considers the accurate retelling of myths and sagas as important, and not their relationship, if any, to actual history. They use a ceremonial date for the first invasion of Ireland – the beginning of Irish Mythology – of October 23rd, 4004 BC, following Bishop Ussher, the 17th century AD Anglican Archbishop of Ireland, who determined that was the date the earth was created. [14]
The ancient myths of Ireland were not written down until about the 7th century AD, by Christian monks, but Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the tradition of oral sagas reflects that heroic culture that existed before the coming of Saint Patrick. The Greek historian and polymath Posidonius wrote of the Celts in the 1st century BC. He is said to have written 52 volumes of history, but only fragments survive in the quotations of others. [15] Julius Caesar, in the 2nd century BC, wrote "Druids ... are concerned with divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, public and private, and the interpretation of ritual questions... In fact, it is they who decide in most all disputes, public and private; and if any crime has been committed, or murder done, or there has been any dispute about succession or boundaries, they also decide it… The Druids usually hold aloof from war, and do not pay war taxes with the rest; they are excused from military services and exempt from all liabilities." [16] (The Quakers, also, "usually hold aloof from war.") [17]
The Irish archeologist Michael J. O'Kelly tells us that Irish society was divided into nobles, a learned class, and freemen. The learned class preserved, in oral form, from one generation to the next, a considerable body of material, including the tales, poems, genealogies, and eulogies. The law, too, was enshrined in oral form. The Irish learned class was the aes dána, and in Gaul the druides. The word druid came to have a more restricted meaning than the one it enjoyed in Celtic Gaul where it embraced a wide variety of functions apart from its religious one. In Ireland the name druid was more or less interchangeable with fili, meaning wise man or seer." [18]
Saint Patrick is remembered for bringing Christianity to Ireland in about the 5th century AD. The 'snakes' he so famously drove out of Ireland are supposed to have been a pejorative reference to the druids, because of the serpentine jewel of office, called a 'Druid's Foot,' that they wore. [19] There never were any snakes native to Ireland. [20] In the 12th century manuscript Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients) Saint Patrick meets with Caílte mac Rónáin and Oisín, heroes from the already ancient Fenian Cycle of myths, and with the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Saint learns much of Ireland and her legendary past, and the mythic fairy pantheon mostly concedes its dominion of Éire (Ireland) to the coming Christian faith. [21] The story is retold in William Butler Yeats poem The Wanderings of Oisín.
Example 1. [22]
Example 2 [23]
Archtypes [24]
Strabo on druids. [26]
Druids do this. [27]
Druids do no military service and train for 20 years. [28]
Druids do human sacrifices. [29]
Druids worship Lugh. [30]
It was with this in mind that the American Reformed* Irish Druid sect (AR*ID) came together in AD 1985 as a Constitutionally protected religion that could not only laugh at itself, but go out of its way to make sure it was funny.
The reality of Aes Sídhe and the truth of their tales lies in the unity of cultural values they bring to folks across the generations. For example, the story of the boy hero Cú Chulainn lashing himself to a pillar that he might die facing the enemy is not about another teenage life wasted in war, but about heroic constancy to duty. A non-literal belief in our myths and mythic characters is fine. The mythologist Joseph Campbell compared those who insist on reading myths as literal history, instead of cultural, to someone who goes into a restaurant and eats the menu, mistaking the printed description for the entrée.
The Celts have left no native myth of the world's creation, though it would be strange it they lacked one.… This re-writing of tradition was progressively elaborated during the following centuries until finally, in the twelfth, it culminated in the pseudo-history entitled Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, 'The Book of the Conquest of Ireland', commonly known as the Book of Invasions. The 'conquest' of the title refers no doubt to the arrival of the Gaels …
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
The nature-based character of Celtic religion is at all times evident. This is emphasized not merely by the recurring importance of natural places, but also by the prominent role played by birds and animals in ritual activities and by the frequency with which these figures in iconographical representations. Creatures of the water and forest predominate. Most notable among the birds are ducks, geese and swans but the raven too is a recurring motif. Among the animals, the boar and the stag stand out.
The Dinnshenchas, which also belongs to the twelfth century in its definitive form, is a massive collection of onomastic lore 'explaining' the names of well-known places throughout Ireland. Marie-Louise Sjoestedt has characterised the two rather neatly: Leabhar Gabhála is the mythological pre-history of the country and the Dimnshenchas is the mythologial geography.
Rivers figure prominently in Celtic mythology for the waters of rivers were inextricably bound up with the fertility of the soil. Each river had it tutelary goddess and many of today's river names – for example, the Shannon and the Boyne – derive directly from the names of such divinities. Springs and wells, too, had important supernatural properties, especially curative properties, and the many holy wells which are today dispersed across the Irish countryside are doubtless the Christianized descendants of places of pagan pilgrimage.
In ancient times, Sacred Groves were places of sanctuary and worship for the Druids. Like a temple or chapel set within the natural world, they were places of spiritual refuge: places to calm the mind, refresh the spirit, and give comfort in times of distress.
We first learn about the oak as sacred to the Druids in the well-known passage from the writings of Pliny, who lived in Gaul during the 1st century CE. He writes that the Druids performed all their religious rites in oak-groves, where they gathered mistletoe from the trees with a golden sickle.
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cite web}}
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cite web}}
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help)
...nothing is gained by brushing them aside as ridiculous, for archetypes are among the inalienable assets of every psyche. They form the 'treasure in the realm of shadowy thoughts' of which Kant spoke, and of which we have ample evidence in the countless treasure motifs of mythology. An archetype as such is in no sense just an annoying prejudice; it becomes so only when it is in the wrong place. In themselves, archetypal images are among the highest values of the human psyche; they have peopled the heavens of all races from time immemorial. To discard them as valueless would be a distinct loss. Our task is not, therefore, to deny the archetype, but to dissolve the projections, in order to restore their contents to the individual who has involuntarily lost them by projecting them outside himself.
{{
cite book}}
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Among all the Gallic peoples, generally speaking, there are three sets of men who are held in exceptional honour; the Bards, the Vates and the Druids. The Bards are singers and poets; the Vates, diviners and natural philosophers; while the Druids, in addition to natural philosophy, study also moral philosophy. The Druids are considered the most just of men, and on this account they are entrusted with the decision, not only of the private disputes, but of the public disputes as well; so that, in former times, they even arbitrated cases of war and made the opponents stop when they were about to line up for battle, and the murder cases, in particular, had been turned over to them for decision. Further, when there is a big yield from these cases, there is forthcoming a big yield from the land too, as they think. However, not only the Druids, but others as well, say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible,127 although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.
Category:Druidry
Category:Neopaganism in the United States
Category:Neo-druidism
Category:Pagan religious organizations
Category:Religion in California
Category:Religious organizations established in 1985
— Tim Hawkins ( talk)
Ériu,
Fotla and
Banba, the goddesses of Irish sovereignty, are three sisters.
[1]
![]() | |
Founded | |
---|---|
October 23rd, 4004 BC | |
Reformed | |
May 4th, AD 1985 | |
Location | |
California and Baja California Norte y Sur | |
Patron Tree | |
California Live Oak | |
Tribes | |
5 | |
Scriptures | |
Leabhar de Chineál (The Book of Nature) | |
Website | |
AmDruids.org | |
The American Reformed* Irish Druids (AR*ID) are an animistic, reconstructionist, pagan sect in California. Ecclesitically they celebrate oral rendition of Irish myths; their goal is to practice paganry as it was in pre-Christian Ireland, as reformed*; and they are humor [2], social, and culture oriented. Their Reformation* was on Beltaine, 4 May, 1985. The asterisk is part of their name and refers to their 1 reform.*
* NO human sacrifices!
The AR*ID sect is inexclusive, that is members may concurrently follow other religious or spiritual traditions. They accept non-literal belief in myths and mythic characters. [3]
Irish mythology does not have a creation myth. It begins instead with a series of invasions, described in The Book of Invasions. The last invasion being the Milesians [4], the sons of Míl, Irish human mortals, who agreed to share their world with the " Good Neighbors", the People of Fairy, made up of the Irish pagan deities and mythic characters, and also every natural thing named, from individual rocks and trees, to geographic features such as wells, lakes and rivers, to mountains, plains and provinces, and even Ireland herself, plus a seemingly endless parade of other Fairy Folk that includes leprechauns, banshees, mermaids, pookas, and so on and on. Add to this the ancient Irish tradition of ancestor worship that adds the spirits of the dead to the landscape. Lady Gregory wrote "I believe that if Christianity could be blotted out and forgotten tomorrow, our people would not be moved at all from a belief in a spiritual world ..." [5]
Nature is a central element of Celtic paganry. [6] Several of the mythic characters were shape shifters, as familiar in animal form as human, such as the Morrígan as a crow. A number of animals are important thematic elements in different mythic tales, such as the boar, swans, salmon and, centrally, the stag and cattle. [7] Images of the antlered figured referred to as Cernunnos show him surrounded by animals.
The belief in places as Fairy Folk can be seen in the Dinnshenchas, the Irish onomastic mythology of place names. [8] Water — wells, springs, bogs, lakes, rivers, and so on — are of special importance in Irish pagan myth and practice, in part because water is believed to be a link to the Otherworld. [9] For example, the River Shannon (an tSionna in Old Irish Gaelic) and the goddess Sionna are believed to be one person.
Strabo on "oak sanctuary". [10]
Sacred Grove. [11]
Oak. [12]
Druidry's pre-historic origins are lost in the mists of time; the AR*ID sect's reformation was in AD 1985. They have been inspired by the early Quaker's aim to re-instate primitive Christianity [13], and set as their goal to recreate, as much as possible, the druidism of Ireland before Saint Patrick.
According to Irish mythology the Tuatha Dé Danann (the Tribe of Danu) invaded Ireland on a Bealtaine (about May 1st), in an unknowable year, and eventually defeated the previous invaders, the Fir Bolg people and the Fomorians, to dominate the island. {citation needed} They and their families became the principal members of the aes sídhe (the fairy folk). The AR*ID sect considers the accurate retelling of myths and sagas as important, and not their relationship, if any, to actual history. They use a ceremonial date for the first invasion of Ireland – the beginning of Irish Mythology – of October 23rd, 4004 BC, following Bishop Ussher, the 17th century AD Anglican Archbishop of Ireland, who determined that was the date the earth was created. [14]
The ancient myths of Ireland were not written down until about the 7th century AD, by Christian monks, but Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the tradition of oral sagas reflects that heroic culture that existed before the coming of Saint Patrick. The Greek historian and polymath Posidonius wrote of the Celts in the 1st century BC. He is said to have written 52 volumes of history, but only fragments survive in the quotations of others. [15] Julius Caesar, in the 2nd century BC, wrote "Druids ... are concerned with divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, public and private, and the interpretation of ritual questions... In fact, it is they who decide in most all disputes, public and private; and if any crime has been committed, or murder done, or there has been any dispute about succession or boundaries, they also decide it… The Druids usually hold aloof from war, and do not pay war taxes with the rest; they are excused from military services and exempt from all liabilities." [16] (The Quakers, also, "usually hold aloof from war.") [17]
The Irish archeologist Michael J. O'Kelly tells us that Irish society was divided into nobles, a learned class, and freemen. The learned class preserved, in oral form, from one generation to the next, a considerable body of material, including the tales, poems, genealogies, and eulogies. The law, too, was enshrined in oral form. The Irish learned class was the aes dána, and in Gaul the druides. The word druid came to have a more restricted meaning than the one it enjoyed in Celtic Gaul where it embraced a wide variety of functions apart from its religious one. In Ireland the name druid was more or less interchangeable with fili, meaning wise man or seer." [18]
Saint Patrick is remembered for bringing Christianity to Ireland in about the 5th century AD. The 'snakes' he so famously drove out of Ireland are supposed to have been a pejorative reference to the druids, because of the serpentine jewel of office, called a 'Druid's Foot,' that they wore. [19] There never were any snakes native to Ireland. [20] In the 12th century manuscript Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients) Saint Patrick meets with Caílte mac Rónáin and Oisín, heroes from the already ancient Fenian Cycle of myths, and with the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Saint learns much of Ireland and her legendary past, and the mythic fairy pantheon mostly concedes its dominion of Éire (Ireland) to the coming Christian faith. [21] The story is retold in William Butler Yeats poem The Wanderings of Oisín.
Example 1. [22]
Example 2 [23]
Archtypes [24]
Strabo on druids. [26]
Druids do this. [27]
Druids do no military service and train for 20 years. [28]
Druids do human sacrifices. [29]
Druids worship Lugh. [30]
It was with this in mind that the American Reformed* Irish Druid sect (AR*ID) came together in AD 1985 as a Constitutionally protected religion that could not only laugh at itself, but go out of its way to make sure it was funny.
The reality of Aes Sídhe and the truth of their tales lies in the unity of cultural values they bring to folks across the generations. For example, the story of the boy hero Cú Chulainn lashing himself to a pillar that he might die facing the enemy is not about another teenage life wasted in war, but about heroic constancy to duty. A non-literal belief in our myths and mythic characters is fine. The mythologist Joseph Campbell compared those who insist on reading myths as literal history, instead of cultural, to someone who goes into a restaurant and eats the menu, mistaking the printed description for the entrée.
The Celts have left no native myth of the world's creation, though it would be strange it they lacked one.… This re-writing of tradition was progressively elaborated during the following centuries until finally, in the twelfth, it culminated in the pseudo-history entitled Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, 'The Book of the Conquest of Ireland', commonly known as the Book of Invasions. The 'conquest' of the title refers no doubt to the arrival of the Gaels …
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
The nature-based character of Celtic religion is at all times evident. This is emphasized not merely by the recurring importance of natural places, but also by the prominent role played by birds and animals in ritual activities and by the frequency with which these figures in iconographical representations. Creatures of the water and forest predominate. Most notable among the birds are ducks, geese and swans but the raven too is a recurring motif. Among the animals, the boar and the stag stand out.
The Dinnshenchas, which also belongs to the twelfth century in its definitive form, is a massive collection of onomastic lore 'explaining' the names of well-known places throughout Ireland. Marie-Louise Sjoestedt has characterised the two rather neatly: Leabhar Gabhála is the mythological pre-history of the country and the Dimnshenchas is the mythologial geography.
Rivers figure prominently in Celtic mythology for the waters of rivers were inextricably bound up with the fertility of the soil. Each river had it tutelary goddess and many of today's river names – for example, the Shannon and the Boyne – derive directly from the names of such divinities. Springs and wells, too, had important supernatural properties, especially curative properties, and the many holy wells which are today dispersed across the Irish countryside are doubtless the Christianized descendants of places of pagan pilgrimage.
In ancient times, Sacred Groves were places of sanctuary and worship for the Druids. Like a temple or chapel set within the natural world, they were places of spiritual refuge: places to calm the mind, refresh the spirit, and give comfort in times of distress.
We first learn about the oak as sacred to the Druids in the well-known passage from the writings of Pliny, who lived in Gaul during the 1st century CE. He writes that the Druids performed all their religious rites in oak-groves, where they gathered mistletoe from the trees with a golden sickle.
{{
cite web}}
: Text "FONZ" ignored (
help)
{{
cite web}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month=
(
help)
...nothing is gained by brushing them aside as ridiculous, for archetypes are among the inalienable assets of every psyche. They form the 'treasure in the realm of shadowy thoughts' of which Kant spoke, and of which we have ample evidence in the countless treasure motifs of mythology. An archetype as such is in no sense just an annoying prejudice; it becomes so only when it is in the wrong place. In themselves, archetypal images are among the highest values of the human psyche; they have peopled the heavens of all races from time immemorial. To discard them as valueless would be a distinct loss. Our task is not, therefore, to deny the archetype, but to dissolve the projections, in order to restore their contents to the individual who has involuntarily lost them by projecting them outside himself.
{{
cite book}}
: Unknown parameter |editorn-first=
ignored (
help); Unknown parameter |editorn-last=
ignored (
help)
Among all the Gallic peoples, generally speaking, there are three sets of men who are held in exceptional honour; the Bards, the Vates and the Druids. The Bards are singers and poets; the Vates, diviners and natural philosophers; while the Druids, in addition to natural philosophy, study also moral philosophy. The Druids are considered the most just of men, and on this account they are entrusted with the decision, not only of the private disputes, but of the public disputes as well; so that, in former times, they even arbitrated cases of war and made the opponents stop when they were about to line up for battle, and the murder cases, in particular, had been turned over to them for decision. Further, when there is a big yield from these cases, there is forthcoming a big yield from the land too, as they think. However, not only the Druids, but others as well, say that men's souls, and also the universe, are indestructible,127 although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.
Category:Druidry
Category:Neopaganism in the United States
Category:Neo-druidism
Category:Pagan religious organizations
Category:Religion in California
Category:Religious organizations established in 1985