43 replies to this topic

[DieChecker]

Isn't there a distinction between a Celtic Bard, and a Celtic Druid? I think maybe some people have these mixed up. The Druids were politicians and priests, if I remember right. And the bards might be warriors as well as historians.

[Mordha]

DieChecker, on 16 October 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Isn't there a distinction between a Celtic Bard, and a Celtic Druid? I think maybe some people have these mixed up. The Druids were politicians and priests, if I remember right. And the bards might be warriors as well as historians.

This appears to have been a later development. The Bard acted as a genealogist and dancing monkey boy for whichever lord he was attached to. A proper Druid had more power than the the lord/chieftain/king due to the control that comes from being the mouthpiece of the gods. Note: how Christian priests were able to utilize this in the later years.

We have to remember that an actual human being was able to do three things(or hold three official duties)at the same time in the Ancient Days. In modern times we have an overwhelming amount of knowledge we have to process, back then the times were simpler - except for the part about dealing with lords/chieftains/kings. That has always been complicated.

[Clobhair-cean]

DieChecker, on 16 October 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Isn't there a distinction between a Celtic Bard, and a Celtic Druid? I think maybe some people have these mixed up. The Druids were politicians and priests, if I remember right. And the bards might be warriors as well as historians.

I'm not sure about the general Celtic concept, but I do know about how things went in Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) societies.

The bards were called the filí (file in singular), and they most of them were directly "employed" by the kings and chieftains. These were called the ollam and their highes ranking members (Rí-Ollam) were societal equals to the king. There were also some travelling file. Their primary role was preserving the genealogy of the ruler, including family history and past great deeds, and performing these stories at a whim. They also composed new poems about the present ruler and added them to the canon (post-Christian Gaelic poets preserved the tradition up until the early 20th century, and we have records of poets who could improvise songs about current events on the spot from the 19th century). They were vigorously trained and after a while, the position was restricted to certain families. Generally speaking, traditional file disappeared somewhere around the 12th century. While file could be warriors, I don't think they actually fought, the knowledge contained in their heads was too valuable.

Druids, on the other hand were much older and they lost much of their significance in Gaelic culture a long time before that. It seems that they were part of a religious order that was somewhat detached from the ruling classes and they had more of a religious and less of a historiographical role in society. They also performed a healing role, but they generally disappeared from the Gaelic countries around the introduction of Christianity and much of their knowledge was lost. Their actual doings are very murky and the definition of a druid in a Gaelic context is extremely broad.

[Mordha]

This is my last post on this topic and I would like to leave with a simple question.
Why doesn't anyone want to learn a Celtic language?
Séamus Ó Mórdha

[Paracelse]

Mordha, on 16 October 2012 - 09:19 PM, said:

This appears to have been a later development. The Bard acted as a genealogist and dancing monkey boy for whichever lord he was attached to. A proper Druid had more power than the the lord/chieftain/king due to the control that comes from being the mouthpiece of the gods. Note: how Christian priests were able to utilize this in the later years.

We have to remember that an actual human being was able to do three things(or hold three official duties)at the same time in the Ancient Days. In modern times we have an overwhelming amount of knowledge we have to process, back then the times were simpler - except for the part about dealing with lords/chieftains/kings. That has always been complicated.

You are wrong about bards being dancing monkeys.  I fact it longer to become a bard than to become a "file" which took 10 years (a file is a apprentice druid) or a druid (14 to 20 years).  You have to remember the druids legacy lies in France where they had their annual meeting in "La foret des Carnutes" (Carnutes' forest?).  No one has of yet have pinpointed where this place really is.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnutes

[Clobhair-cean]

Mordha, on 17 October 2012 - 01:42 AM, said:

This is my last post on this topic and I would like to leave with a simple question.
Why doesn't anyone want to learn a Celtic language?
Séamus Ó Mórdha

Because they are fun and messed up, at least that was my reason for learning Irish.

Paracelse, on 17 October 2012 - 06:33 AM, said:

You are wrong about bards being dancing monkeys.  I fact it longer to become a bard than to become a "file" which took 10 years (a file is a apprentice druid) or a druid (14 to 20 years).  You have to remember the druids legacy lies in France where they had their annual meeting in "La foret des Carnutes" (Carnutes' forest?).  No one has of yet have pinpointed where this place really is.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnutes

No, the file were not apprentice druids. They were a completely different thing.

[Harsh86_Patel]

There are close parralles between the Druid culture and the Vedic culture.Here are some links that highlight the similarities:
http://www.druidry.o.../druidry-dharma
http://druidnetwork.org/en/node/1494

From what we know of the Druids there was a lot of cultural similarity and relegious similarity.

http://www.northernw...nwarticles.html

[Paracelse]

Clobhair-cean, on 17 October 2012 - 07:07 AM, said:

No, the file were not apprentice druids. They were a completely different thing.

I know that I was just wondering if anyone else knew that under the qualitative name "Druids"  there were other substrate which most people aren't aware of.

Harsh86_Patel, on 17 October 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

There are close parralles between the Druid culture and the Vedic culture.Here are some links that highlight the similarities:
http://www.druidry.o.../druidry-dharma
http://druidnetwork.org/en/node/1494

From what we know of the Druids there was a lot of cultural similarity and relegious similarity.

http://www.northernw...nwarticles.html

Mircea Eliade actually did lots of research on the subject but many French esoterists were mentioning it since the late XVIII th century.

[Harsh86_Patel]

Paracelse, on 17 October 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

I know that I was just wondering if anyone else knew that under the qualitative name "Druids"  there were other substrate which most people aren't aware of.

Mircea Eliade actually did lots of research on the subject but many French esoterists were mentioning it since the late XVIII th century.

I am an Indian and have some knowledge of Hindu Brhmanical traditions and from what i have read about the ancient Celtic Druids i can definitely see a connection.

[Harsh86_Patel]

Clobhair-cean, on 16 October 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

I'm not sure about the general Celtic concept, but I do know about how things went in Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) societies.

The bards were called the filí (file in singular), and they most of them were directly "employed" by the kings and chieftains. These were called the ollam and their highes ranking members (Rí-Ollam) were societal equals to the king. There were also some travelling file. Their primary role was preserving the genealogy of the ruler, including family history and past great deeds, and performing these stories at a whim. They also composed new poems about the present ruler and added them to the canon (post-Christian Gaelic poets preserved the tradition up until the early 20th century, and we have records of poets who could improvise songs about current events on the spot from the 19th century). They were vigorously trained and after a while, the position was restricted to certain families. Generally speaking, traditional file disappeared somewhere around the 12th century. While file could be warriors, I don't think they actually fought, the knowledge contained in their heads was too valuable.

Druids, on the other hand were much older and they lost much of their significance in Gaelic culture a long time before that. It seems that they were part of a religious order that was somewhat detached from the ruling classes and they had more of a religious and less of a historiographical role in society. They also performed a healing role, but they generally disappeared from the Gaelic countries around the introduction of Christianity and much of their knowledge was lost. Their actual doings are very murky and the definition of a druid in a Gaelic context is extremely broad.

They didn't just dissappear with "introduction" of Christianity.They were "wiped of" by aggressive propogation of the "early Christian".Europe suffered a cultural amnesia due to the aggresive fascist nature of early christians.The early christians in their religious zeal burned most of Europes history away and most of the post christianity history of Europe and also the world was written by industrious christian monks,and guess who was censoring and editing the history.......the christian monks and the Church.As we know that most of the world history was compiled in the 16th and 18th century often from third hand sources and copies of copies again by christian scholars and they desperately tried to fit in everything according to the biblical creationist world view that the Universe was created roughly 6000 years B.P. and all information related to civilizations before say 5000/4000 B.C could have been burned/destroyed or misrepresented or simply ignored as false.
Majority of our modern historical views have not changed since that time and other then a few rejections and changes everything else is still accepted as accurate by modern historians.We cannot ignore that a lot of information of pre 5000/4000 b.c. civilisations could have been lost/burned/ignored and discredited and what we have at present is a highly filtered version.

[Clobhair-cean]

Druids were on the way out by the time Christianity arrived to Ireland. The monks there did great works in preserving pagan texts and myths and had no real connection to the Church

Paracelse, on 17 October 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

Mircea Eliade actually did lots of research on the subject but many French esoterists were mentioning it since the late XVIII th century.

We know more about the druids than we did in the XVIII century, and that's still very little. It is of no surprise that two religions that stem from the same Indo-European roots show certain superficial similarities, but we can't really state anything more, as we know practically nothing about the druids, their practices and beliefs.

Harsh86_Patel, on 18 October 2012 - 07:02 AM, said:

They didn't just dissappear with "introduction" of Christianity.They were "wiped of" by aggressive propogation of the "early Christian".Europe suffered a cultural amnesia due to the aggresive fascist nature of early christians.The early christians in their religious zeal burned most of Europes history away and most of the post christianity history of Europe and also the world was written by industrious christian monks,and guess who was censoring and editing the history.......the christian monks and the Church.As we know that most of the world history was compiled in the 16th and 18th century often from third hand sources and copies of copies again by christian scholars and they desperately tried to fit in everything according to the biblical creationist world view that the Universe was created roughly 6000 years B.P. and all information related to civilizations before say 5000/4000 B.C could have been burned/destroyed or misrepresented or simply ignored as false.
Majority of our modern historical views have not changed since that time and other then a few rejections and changes everything else is still accepted as accurate by modern historians.We cannot ignore that a lot of information of pre 5000/4000 b.c. civilisations could have been lost/burned/ignored and discredited and what we have at present is a highly filtered version.

Oh wow, Harsh makes no sense, stop the presses, we have a new headline!

Christianity was not introduced to Ireland by fire and sword, it was slowly and ingeniously spread around the country, integrating an immense amount of pagan traditions. The monks did a great job in preserving as much of the Celtic myths and texts as possible and the changes they made are rather easy to notice and don't harm the integrity of the texts. Without them the great works of pre-Christian Ireland, the Mythological Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Ulster Cycle and the Historical Cycle would not have survived. The Church had no authority over Ireland until 1172.

And the Church did not destroy anything from pre 4-5000 BCE, because they were not in the possession of anything from that time, and even if they were, they had no means of telling how old it was. Young-Earth Creationism wasn't even that widespread until the Reformations, as Catholics don't believe that the Bible should be read as literally as possible.

Modern historiography has change significantly since the 18th century, please crawl back to your den and don't pollute yet another thread with your nonsense if you can't rid yourself of false statements.

[Harsh86_Patel]

Clobhair-cean, on 18 October 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

Druids were on the way out by the time Christianity arrived to Ireland. The monks there did great works in preserving pagan texts and myths and had no real connection to the Church

We know more about the druids than we did in the XVIII century, and that's still very little. It is of no surprise that two religions that stem from the same Indo-European roots show certain superficial similarities, but we can't really state anything more, as we know practically nothing about the druids, their practices and beliefs.




Oh wow, Harsh makes no sense, stop the presses, we have a new headline!

Christianity was not introduced to Ireland by fire and sword, it was slowly and ingeniously spread around the country, integrating an immense amount of pagan traditions. The monks did a great job in preserving as much of the Celtic myths and texts as possible and the changes they made are rather easy to notice and don't harm the integrity of the texts. Without them the great works of pre-Christian Ireland, the Mythological Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Ulster Cycle and the Historical Cycle would not have survived. The Church had no authority over Ireland until 1172.

And the Church did not destroy anything from pre 4-5000 BCE, because they were not in the possession of anything from that time, and even if they were, they had no means of telling how old it was. Young-Earth Creationism wasn't even that widespread until the Reformations, as Catholics don't believe that the Bible should be read as literally as possible.

Modern historiography has change significantly since the 18th century, please crawl back to your den and don't pollute yet another thread with your nonsense if you can't rid yourself of false statements.

http://notachristian...atrocities.html
A good link that highlights few instances of cultural cleansing done by early christians against the so called Pagans (Vedic?).The druids would have literally had to go into hiding to escape death.

There are various documented instances where any historical document that seemed heretical to the early christian mind were systematically destroyed,various christian forgeries were introduced by christian scribes into scriptures of jews etc.

Spanish inquistion caused the destruction of unthinkable amounts of historical data.

Also what really heralded the DARK AGES (cultural amnesia) after the decline of the Roman Empire?
http://en.wikipedia....historiography)
Was the cause Early Christianity?
Where did the history and culture dissappear during the dark ages?

I said the early Church would have destroyed/ignored/misrepresented any evidence/knowledge/history of pre 4000/5000 BC civlizations.

I would doubt the sincerity with which fundamental early christian monks would preserve the histories of heretical pagan cultures.Something that could have led to their conviction and execution as heretics themselves.The history of Rome was saved because it was the cradle of Christianity(obviously Greek history got the same attention since they were predecessors of the Roman culture) what about the rest?

Two best methods by which early Christianity was propogated was by economic bribery/pressure and fire and sword.

I know that modern Catholics do not read the Bible literally,thanks to Martin Luther and the reformation.

The easiest way to test whether modern historians have made any major changes to our conception of world history (foundations for which were laid down by early christian scholars painted by religious world view) is to see how we still resist dating any civilization beyond 4000/5000 B.C.(Gobekli Tepe is good example,they didn't attribute it to civilization but to nomadic hunter gartherers.)

The early christian world view is what is still dictating directly or indirectly our view of advent of civlization around the world till present.

Because of the intolerant attitude of Early Christians it is difficult to trust any historical information provided by early Christian historians pre Reformation.And there is strong reason to believe that their supremacist notions caused the early christians to filter and destroy a lot of world history and culture and to impose the versions that they indorsed,and sadly much of it has still continued till today.

[Clobhair-cean]

I won't reply because I don't want this thread to be derailed and turned into your own personal playground of falsehoods and misconceptions, but you are just so damn wrong about practically everything.

So, back to Druids and away from Harsh.

[Harsh86_Patel]

Clobhair-cean, on 18 October 2012 - 10:27 AM, said:

I won't reply because I don't want this thread to be derailed and turned into your own personal playground of falsehoods and misconceptions, but you are just so damn wrong about practically everything.

So, back to Druids and away from Harsh.

Withdraw your accusations or provide some evidence for your claims/accusations.Or readers will deem you as unreliable.
Maybe it is you who is practically wrong about everything.
Druids would be turning in their graves when some imbeciles say that they "just dissappeared" with "introduction" of Christianity or before the advent of Christianity.
So back to the Druids with due respect.