modern Druidry

modern Druidry, religion that arose in early 20th-century Britain and whose followers, called Druids, borrow their identity from the ancient druids of Iron Age Europe. In most variants this new religious movement can be regarded as a modern Pagan religion, but its eclectic and open-minded ethos means that it is also followed by members of other religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity. Internationally, the number of Druids is unclear but estimates suggest that the number is in the tens of thousands, with adherents concentrated principally in Europe and North America.

Origins and history

The original druids were ritual specialists active among certain Celtic-speaking societies found during the Iron Age in Western Europe. The first historical records that mention them date from about 200 bce. Little is known of them with any certainty, but historical sources—which are often beset by problems of ethnic and religious bias—suggest that they may have engaged in both divination and animal (and perhaps human) sacrifice within the context of a polytheistic religious tradition. The druids declined due to expanding Roman imperialism in the region during the first centuries of the Common Era. Although they likely persevered longer in Ireland and northern Britain, the subsequent spread of Christianity ultimately rendered the druids extinct by the High Middle Ages.

Interest in the ancient druids emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries among European antiquarians—early modern scholars and collectors who studied ancient remains, manuscripts, and monuments. Their speculations, although deemed inaccurate by later historians, helped shape popular understandings of the ancient druids. For example, antiquarian scholars introduced the erroneous notion that druids built stone circles—most notably Stonehenge—for their ceremonies, an idea that became embedded in the popular imagination during the 18th century. Modern archaeologists, however, have found no evidence that ancient druids either built these stone circles or used them as major ritual centers.

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In the 18th century several fraternal societies in Britain began to adopt the identity of the druids for themselves, most notably the Ancient Order of Druids (AOD) formed in London in 1781. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Welsh cultural nationalists came to regard the druids as forerunners of Wales’s medieval bards and began integrating new, self-described druids into their eisteddfods, or bardic assembly festivals. These fraternal and cultural druids helped establish the notion that modern, living people could embrace a druid identity.

Key to modern Druidry’s emergence was the Universal Bond, a religious group founded by the Scotsman George Watson MacGregor Reid. Although not initially identifying themselves as Druids, the Universal Bond began performing rituals at Stonehenge in 1912 and, through that connection, came to regard what they did as Druidry, infusing their activities with antiquarian presuppositions. Early Druidic groups like the Universal Bond were heavily informed by theosophy, an occult religious movement established largely by Helena Blavatsky in the 1870s. Like the theosophists, these early Druids often claimed to be practicing forms of an ancient, universal wisdom tradition and did not explicitly identify as Pagan. Early groups such as the Universal Bond sometimes shifted away from Druidry or collapsed with the death of their founders, but in 1946 George Reid’s son, Robert MacGregor Reid, established the Druid Order, a successor organization that continued the Universal Bond’s tradition of Stonehenge rituals.

The 1960s and ’70s saw the rapid growth of modern Paganism in Anglophone Western countries, most notably in the form of Wicca but also through religions such as Heathenry and the Goddess movement. This popularization of modern Paganism influenced the direction that modern Druidry subsequently took. New Druidic groups that emerged were typically Pagan in orientation, as with Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF; Irish: “Our Own Druidry”), established in the United States in 1983.

Of this new wave of religious groups, the most influential was the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD), a United Kingdom-based organization that briefly existed in the 1960s and ’70s before being revived by Philip Carr-Gomm in 1988. Through its correspondence course, OBOD extended its influence internationally and by the early 21st century had forged the most popular model for Druids throughout the world.

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Beliefs and practices

Modern Druidry is an open and eclectic religion, allowing for considerable variation in the beliefs and practices of its followers. Theologically, most Druids are polytheists, engaging with a wide range of deities and spirits, especially those drawn from the pre-Christian pantheons of linguistically Celtic societies in Ireland, Britain, or Gaul. Druids are often animists, thereby emphasizing respectful relationships with animals, plants, and physical places. Many Druids think of their tradition as a “nature religion” or “nature spirituality” with similarities to animistic traditions in other parts of the world. However, some Druids—especially those who identify simultaneously as Christians—are monotheists, while still others subscribe to pantheism, atheism, and other perspectives on divinity. Beliefs in the afterlife similarly vary, although many Druids believe in the existence of souls that survive bodily death, often through reincarnation.

Many Druids primarily follow their religion alone, but others are members of small practitioner groups commonly referred to as groves. Both groves and solitary practitioners may be affiliated with larger organizations typically known as orders, each promoting its own particular approach to modern Druidry.

The most common ritual practice is the giving of offerings to deities, although—in contrast to the ancient druids—the sacrifice of animals (or humans) is not practiced in modern Druidry. Modern Druidic offerings often take the form of (usually vegetarian) food and drink, including alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. They may also involve gifts of natural items such as flowers, herbs, and leaves. The religion places a particularly strong emphasis on creative pursuits and thus offerings often include written prayers, poetry, and song. Temporary altars may be constructed as places where these offerings are given. Other common practices among Druids include the celebration of seasonal festivals, meditation, and divination. Divination practices often use Tarot cards or the ogham alphabet, which was originally employed in early medieval Irish and Pictish inscriptions.

Druidic rituals usually take place outdoors, especially in natural environments. In Europe it is common for Druidic rites to occur at prehistoric ceremonial structures such as chambered tombs and stone circles. For most Druids, these are sacred sites, places that connect them with pre-Christian ancestors and with spirits of the place. Although not strictly required, many practitioners wear robes for their rituals; some groups prefer white robes, although others favor earthy colors like browns and greens. This clothing in turn helps Druids feel a sense of kinship with Europe’s pre-Christian peoples, including the ancient druids, who in the popular imagination are often envisioned as robed.

Some practitioners, particularly in modern Druidry’s early decades, have maintained that their tradition is a direct continuation of the ancient druids’ religion, one that had been preserved in secret over two millennia. However, scholars of religion typically view modern Druidry as a new religious movement inspired by the ancient druids, rather than as a survival of that ancient tradition or an accurate recreation or revival of it. In this way, modern Druidry represents an example of how practitioners of new religious movements look to the distant past as a source for meaning, inspiration, and legitimation.