On the origin of Druids. -3

This "Paper" presents a "chronological history of the origin of the Druids" in Celtic History.

"The Druidian Exegesis - December 3, 2009 "

On the origin of Druids. -3

Definition: Druids: A Celtic Group, which was considered to possess some "knowledge" of an esoteric nature.

The Druids have been written about by many who have mentioned that they were at once brilliant men and women with an extended wisdom, and, in other accounts, "Savages".  That seems a bit contradictory, I realize, but that is the state of knowledge written about the Druids thusfar.

The oldest reference of any credibility this Author has been able to find indicates that the Druids appeared (as if my Majick) approximately 300 BCE * and survived, as a group, until the latest statement found of their longevity which gives the "ending date of the Druids" as 250 ** CE.   Amazing what a people who didn't believe in writing things down, and did not, in fact, write things down, accomplished in just 550 years!  The oldest generally accepted reference to a Druid is that of "Diviciacus or Divitiacus of the Aedui" (Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diviciacus_(Aedui)). 

I know you are wondering, "but where did the Druids come from?".  A fair question.  A question to which few have been able to offer anything reasonable in the way of an answer.  Comments on the Druids from their own time focus on their extraordinary knowledge and wisdom, when Authors outside the Roman Empire commented on them.  One surviving account of the Druids from Julius Caesar paints them as remarkable Spiritual and Intelligent Savages.  The Roman account was given by a man ruling an Empire that was bent on conquering the Celtic lands in which the Druids lived, and exterminating the Druids.  It is not surprising that Caesar would offer such commentary as would render him a "Hero" to his own people.  This account more than any other has "colored" the image of the Druids for two thousand years.   While this is the "standard line" of antiquity offered by Rome regarding the Druids, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to abandon all of that in favor of the Truth. 

In searching for accurate information where it seems there is none, perhaps owing to human nature, it seems we have all gotten "hung up" on the Name "Druid" and that caused us to look away from more salient questions and their answers.  Well, we are about to handle that issue here.  The name "Druid" is a combination of the Greek word "Drus" and the Phoenician word "vid".  "Drus" meaning "of the Oak", "vid" meaning one who "sees" (as in "seeing" the Future). 

This will be a short paper that will attempt to do what Volumes have been unable to do, i.e., answer the question of "where the Druids came from".   This question's answer offers a bit of a "bonus", it will also answer some of the other central questions regarding the Druids.   

Everything we discuss here will be "BCE", from the time before the Christian arbitrary year " 1 ".

As far as we know, the "Celtic Civilization" is first reported to have existed around the time 2000 BCE, 4000 yeas ago.  The ending date for that Civilization is commonly given as 50 CE (Current Era).  Interestingly, the Start and End dates for the Druids that are generally accepted differ considerably with what we stated above..  The Druids were purported to have existed from roughly 300 BCE until 250 CE.  (Obviously, this means we must extend the length of the Celtic Civilization by an additional 200 years.  Consider it done ! )   Seemingly, the Druids "came to be 1700 years, roughly, after the first written mention of the Celtic People, but it should be noted that the Celts existed since a very early time in pre-history before that "mention".  Perhaps it is for this reason that, when considering the Druids, one gets the feeling that rather than being an integral part of the Celtic Civilization from it's beginning, they were, somehow, "apart" from the Celts, yet living among them.  This is more easily understood when the "Druid Origin" is completely explained.  Let's attend to that now. 

To explain the "Druid Origin"  we must tell you of The "Phoenicians", a civilization  which existed in Ancient times before written history. There are references, in Literature, to the Phoenicians existing as far back as 5,000 BCE.  The Phoenicians were a very advanced society for their time.  Great minds must have existed in the civilization which brought the world it's concept of a written and spoken language which consisted of "characters" , rather than being a syllabic language.  The Phoenicians gave the world the language from which all of our current "Character Based" languages originated.  Also familiar with Astronomy and Mathematics, they were a Coastal Society (Maritime Based), now Lebanon, they traveled to many lands and formed a strong relationship with Greece in particular.  The exchanges between Phoenicia and Greece in information made them both, essentially, "Mental Super Powers".    Both developed philosophies of their own, both improved mathematics, and both engaged in trade with other nations that spread their philosophies as far or farther than the "goods" they traded.   All of this is well documented by Historians and Archeologists. 

Armed with the knowledge passed down to them over generations, the Phoenicians eventually, about 2,000  BCE, entered into and opened trade with, and exchanged much information with, the Greeks.  Living among the Greeks, as was the custom of such individuals, no doubt much of their knowledge was absorbed by the Greeks.  Much Greek knowledge was no doubt absorbed by the Phoenicians that came to live in Greece as well.  For our purposes here, however, the matter of the Greeks learning from the Phoenicians is most crucial.  This has been documented a great deal in modern historical works, so, we won't duplicate that effort here.  It is noteworthy that over the centuries the result of the combination of  Phoenician and Greek knowledge was a group of Very Learned People, an "Intelligentsia".   

Over the next 1700 years, the Greeks developed a sizeable number of "Vardi", or Bards, poets as they are generally known, an "offshoot" of the "Intelligentsia" .  Still, the development of a Bardic group in such antiquity figures into our "thesis" very well.  Greece was also one of the centers of the development of "Philosophy".  The development of these was due to both the Phoenician and Greek peoples having a strong philosophical thread in their Society's development.  Phoenicia ( Bordering Israel), now Lebanon, was a most advanced nation in 2000 BCE.   Rulers in this time were prone to "educating" at least one who served as part of their ruling of a Nation-State or Tribe in the "Keys".  The "Keys" were information from the earliest of times passed down through generations of verbal transmission. There was a need to have people who understood what the ruler was doing and could translate it to the administrators and military leaders in order that all might be directed by their wisdom.  Many of the Tribal Chiefs were the Military Leaders of their people, so, for them, it was logical to train a "Priest" to pass the  "keys" on if the Tribal Chief were to die or be killed..  The natural order of things would bring one to expect that, in the larger nation-states more than One Priest would be required to do the Ruler's bidding.  The Rulers were most aware that it would be folly to teach all of the "keys" to ONE person, as that person would be a potential threat if he knew everything the Ruler knew.  So, divided among the Priests, the "Keys" were kept safe in what was required by the Ruler to be a "closed community" of individuals possessing learning of the "Keys".  Remember that the "Keys" were complex information used to access the Energies of the "Deities" and the Universe.   More often than not, the "penalty" for indiscriminate use of the information of the "Keys" was death.  Such a severe penalty prevented advisors to leaders from "defecting" to another camp, or staging a coup ! 

In Phoenicia, before the time of the Old Testament ( 1250 BCE) there were men who learned many "secrets" of being a Human that could effect their Universe.  (By the way, just for the record, "Secrets" are those facts which most people don't know, and are not normally shared. they are sometimes "powerful" facts.)  We are not suggesting that anyone should consider the Old Testament to be the word of anyone in particular or of any Deity, merely a book written by "Elders" who were familiar with the information known as the "Keys", some of whom may have been "Proto-Druids".

Both Greece and Phoenicia were "Patriarchal Societies'.  In several Patriarchal societies of ancient times,  one of the Tribal Leader's children, the eldest Male child was selected to be taught the Keys he would inherit.  The Patriarch was required to be a Male head of family.  The evolution of these people into those that might become the Druids one day would be a long and involved evolution to say the least.  We must understand that the "keys" were passed down over countless generations before the time of the Old Testament.  From 5,000 BCE or earlier, this was "the way of life" of many peoples.  Though there might be new Tribal Chiefs from time to time which had to be, or insisted upon being, taught the "keys", the system itself functioned very well for several millennia in this manner. 

It was the duty of the Phoenician  "Patriarchs", and an evolution of their existence created by increased populations, to teach the "Keys" to those who would keep them alive by teaching them to their children.  A "Patriarchal" society would pass these secrets on from the Patriarch of a family to his "eldest" male child, who would, in turn, pass them on in the same fashion to his own eldest male child, ad infinitum.   In rare instances, the Patriarch could select another person to be taught the information.  That was the theory.  In no way can we prove that families with only female children did not teach the eldest female child in the same manner.  There is no record to lead us to think in either direction. 

This was the humble beginning of the idea, however, of an "elite group" possessing knowledge and discriminating in the act of sharing that information.  Perhaps it was the time when Humankind learned that possession of certain knowledge brought power in dealing with others. 

In about 600 BCE the Greeks founded the colony of Massillia.  This "colony" was strategically located to be instrumental with regard to trade over most of Europe and with the Celts.  The Greeks who established this trade with the Celts named the people they traded with "Abbion" ("White" for the color of the Cliffs of Dover).  At this time there were no "Druids", but, the influences of the "traders" from Greece gave the Celts information from the earliest times in Phoenicia and the earliest times in Greece which, by proxy, would eventually enable the Druids, when they formed, to be included in an "extension of the Phoenician /Grecian Intelligentsia". 

With the passage of time, there were many Celts who were added to the Greek and Phoenician "Intelligentsia"  we have mentioned.  The "Intelligentsia" was not a Formal Organization, mind you, simply a developing part of these societies that grew along the geographical lines we mention here, .  That the "information" itself was constantly being added to, altered by those using it, altered by those "controlling" it, is a logical outcropping of the mixture of  the three societies.  The "product" of all of this admixture was very different in Greece than its original state in Phoenicia, however, the combination created a very sizeable base of data. 

Understandably, the same process would result in the information possessed by the Celtic people being influenced by the Phoenicians and the Greeks..  Adding to the Celtic awareness, many new and different pieces of information, the Greco-Phoenician information that had been acquired over time placed the Celts in a position to develop their own "Priestly Class" .  In time the admixture would, the intelligentsia realized, alter the information greatly.  To protect against dilution of the information, it would be necessary to have this information possessed by a relative few and held closely. 

The Greek "Vardi" ( Greek term normally translated as "Bard") would have been a splendid device for the Celts (the Greeks and Phoenicians as well) to use in the effort to prevent distortion of the information to a point at which important and valuable bits were not permanently altered. 

The Bard could be taught the information which was, then, committed to memory, and could pass it on to the next generation.  This was already being done by the Patriarchs over the past centuries, and the addition of the "Bard" to the process, by the Greeks, merely moved the "task" of preserving the "Keys" from necessarily being done by a Patriarch.  This made it so there was a group "outside the Patriarchy" that would possess and pass on the Keys.  At some undefined point, the Greek "Vardi" began to learn the important information that the Greek and Phoenician Intelligentsia possessed and pass it on by virtue of a stringently trained group that committed the information to memory.  In essence, then, we are considering that it was the Greek Civilization which created the first Druids !  ("Drus" from the Greek, "vid" from the Phoenician ), Celt Elders developed the deep knowledge of the "Oak" which the Greeks referred to in calling them "Drus", ( of the Oak )  The Vardi, Bards, became then the "Drusvid", or Druids.

As they became "known" by this combination name, one must consider that it was from Phoenicia, via Greece, that the "Druid" arrived in the world.  Druidry began as the product of the melding together of the knowledge of the Intelligentsia of the Phoenician and Greek Culture with that of the Celts.  To place a "time" for that beginning is very difficult in any narrow sense as it was a Process and not an Event!  Within one hundred years one way or another, the "time" quoted earlier of 300 BCE fits well enough.  It is important to realize that the portion of the Intelligentsia that became Druid refers to the Celts after 800 BCE, The development of the Druid organization as we have heard of it in Celtic History would take all of the 500 years between 800 BCE and 300 BCE. 

As evidence of the trade between Greece and the Celts, notably our new Druid Celts, in what is now France, a Burial Mound in Vix, Burgundy in which a Female's remains were found .  No one can ascertain whether or not the woman buried there was, indeed, a Druid, but the majority of scientists consider that she was a Druid.  One of the most famous items buried with this Female (Druid) was a large Vase from Greece.  Experts have stated the Vase was of Grecian manufacture.  The most interesting thing regarding the Vase is that it held a liquid content of 280 Gallons, making it the largest ever found.  The Woman was also buried with many gold jewelry items far in excess of what any "common person" might have had in those times.  Silver items Jewels were also present in the Chamber with her remains.  The "Greek Manufacture" of the Vase, however is an indication that the Celtic Druids, had a trade with Greece.  Considering that the Vardi of Greece that became the first Bards/Druids spread into France and Europe, thus passing on the "Keys" to a select group outside Greece, this "Krater" being imported from Greece for a French female Druid exemplifies the complexity of the trade and relationship of these peoples which existed.  Aside from being proof that "Females" were also "Druids", this exchange indicates the social "strata" of Druids of this time, as well as indicating the reverence which the people had for their "Druid". 

Below you find a link to an image of the Vase found in Vix, Burgundy.

From a "Female Burial Site" this Bronze "Volute Krater" was found from a time between 600 and 500 BCE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_Grave

The "Krater" above was 5' 4" in height, a sizable Vase.

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The "Vix Burial Site" alluded to here was during the period of the creation of the complex Druidic Society that became a central part of the Celtic Society, and many other Societies.

While being considered very much a part of Celtic Society, the Druids strike one as being something quite apart from it as well.  Not all Celts were Druids. The Druids come to the senses as more than just a "Priestly Class" as many offer, and something more than " Wizards", they seem to be the "Intelligentsia"  of the Celtic People.  From Phoenician roots, using information passed on to the Greeks and eventually to the Druids, it is indeed a complex trail that leads back to pre-Old Testament times.....to the Phoenicians written of in that Old Testament.  But, when one pieces the information that forms the trail together, the resulting explanation of the existence of the Druids becomes clear.  The need to listen to one's inner senses is never so acute as it is at this moment, they became, indeed, the "Intelligentsia" of the Celtic People ! 

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Copyright by Reid A. Crumley,

December 3, 2009,

All rights Reserved.

*. A Little History of Druidry

http://druidnetwork.org/articles/philipshallcrass.html 

** A Little History of Druidry

http://druidnetwork.org/articles/philipshallcrass.html