The Druids

by

Carlos Antonio Fragoso Guimarães





The Celtics Druids and their Doctrine of Immortality of the Soul



The Druids were priests of the Celtic people dedicated to the feminine aspect of the divinity: the Goddess. But they knew that all our ideas regarding the divinity were just partial and imperfect perceptions of the divine. Thus, all the gods and goddesses of the world would be nothing else that aspects of an only to Be supreme - any that went to its denomination - seen under the human optics.

They didn't admit that the Divinity could be cult inside of temples built by human hands, like this, they did of the fields and of the softest forests - mainly where there were old oaks - the places of its ceremonies. The druids was part of the old Celtic civilization, people that it was spread of Ireland to vast areas in the north of the western Europe, including the Great and Smaller Britain (England and north of France) and it leaves of the end north of the Iberian peninsula (Portugal and Spain).

They dominated all the areas of the human knowledge very well, they cultivated the music, the poetry, they had notable knowledge of natural medicine, of fitoterapy, of agriculture and astronomy, and they possessed an advanced philosophical system very similar to the of the neoplatonics. The woman had a preponderant paper in the culture druídica, because it was seen as the Goddess's image, possess of the power of uniting the sky (the God, the eternal masculine aspect) to the earth (the Goddess, the eternal feminine aspect). Thus, the highest position in the hierarchy priestly druídica was the women's exclusiveness. The highest masculine position would be the one of consultant and " messenger " of the gods, and, among outas denominations, they received the name of Merlin.

From the Roman dominance, the druidic culture was white of severe repression, that today we know very a little on of them, in spite of own Julius Caesar to recognize the corage that the druíds had in facing the death in defense of its culture. We know that they possessed enough wisdom to mark the literature of the time deeply, creating a type of mystery aurea and mysticism (and they, in fact, were mystic), being reverenced and respected as legitimate representatives of the gods.

The Celtic People, as a whole, had been built inside eminently of a tradition oral, that is to say, they didn't use the writing to transfer its fundamental knowledge - although they knew a form of writing runic call. That after the domain of the Christianity - that was well recebidao for the own druídas in the beginning, when the power of the Church of Rome was not still sufficiently strong and corrupted to the point of distorting the basic message of Jesus of tolerance and love - we lost a lot of this wonderful civilization, and, together, we lost a lot of the history of the Druids, and until today a lot of thing stays wrapped up in mystery: do we know that they really existed among the Celtic people, even so they were not properly original of this civilization, then where the Druids came from? Would they be the so terrivbles Sorcerers eagerly pursued by the blind and ambitious of the Roman Catholic Church fanaticism? They were them who helped the people of the British islands the if they liberate of the saxes. Would really have Joseph of Arimatheia (pupil of Jesus) found shelter among them? The history of the Druids frequently hides among several legends, as the one of King Arthur, where Merlin and Arthur's stocking-sister, Morgana, was Druids.

Actually when we studied on the Druids, we just have before us fragments of narrations, some legends and a lot of ecclesiastical opposition, whose hate to the Druids and all the other pagan people is too strong so that its texts are we a reliable source of information. The sensation that we have is the one of embarking totally in a World different, magic, fantastic, as if we took the legendary boat that takes us to the sacred island of Avalon, surrounded of fogs, where an incredible and mysterious people live.

They believed in the immortality of our soul, that will to improve himselv between the reincarnation.

They believed that the man was the responsible person for its destiny in agreement with the acts that freely practiced. All the action was free, but it would always bring a consequence, good or bad, according to the practiced works. The more early the man woke up for the resposabilidade that had in the hands for its own destiny, better. He would still have the help of the protecting spirits and its liberation of the cycles of reincarnations would be faster. He would also have the magna responsibility of passing its knowledge ahead, for the people that were equally capable to understand that law, known today by law of the carma (that is a Hindu denomination, non druídic).

The Druids disappeared gradually of the history as the domain of the Church of Rome grew. The great druids priestswas known as the serpents of the wisdom, and, in a parody without grace, São Patrick was well-known for having expelled " the serpents of Britain ". But the these people's fascination could not disappear suddenly. They were perpetuated in the romances of the trobadors and medieval minstrels, and its influence he/she/it made to feel in the several mystic and contestarious movements contestary of the Medium Age, especially among Cathars and in the Templers Order.

Bibliography:

  • Marion Z. Bradley: As Brumas de Avalon, Imago Editora, São Paulo,1990.
  • Os Celtas, Coleção Povos do Passado, Círculo do Livro, São Paulo, 1996.
  • voltar ao índice de O Espiritualismo Ocidental

    João Pessoa, 30/12/1996
    (C) Copyright 1996 by Carlos Guimarães