are druids a religious group?

Answer 1

druid did not evolve into wicca as one person posted. they are 2 different spiritual paths. druids have been around longer than chritianity, like a lot of religions have.
Quotation:
"Druidry is not a religion. It's a philosophy and you can worship a God or a Goddess, it's up to you. You can be a Christian or a Moslem or anything else and still be a Druid. "But while a Christian will say God made that tree, a Druid will say the energy of a creative force is in that tree." Kieron, a North-East UK Druid.




History:
Modern Druidism is one of the Neopagan family of religions, which includes Wicca and recreations of Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Roman and other ancient Pagan religions. Some present-day Druids attempt to reconstruct of the beliefs and practices of ancient Druidism. Others modern-day followers of Druidism work directly with the spirits of place, of the gods and of their ancestors to create a new Druidism.

Within ancient Druidism, there were three specialties. "A general categorisation of the three different grades accords the arts to the bards, the skills of prophecy and divination to the Ovates and philosophical, teaching, counselling and judicial tasks to the Druid." 1

The Bards were "the keepers of tradition, of the memory of the tribe - they were the custodians of the sacredness of the Word." In Ireland, they trained for 12 years learning grammar, hundreds of stories, poems, philosophy, the Ogham tree-alphabet.
The Ovates worked with the processes of death and regeneration. They were the native healers of the Celts. They specialized in divination, conversing with the ancestors, and prophesizing the future.
The Druids and Druidesses formed the professional class in Celtic society. They performed the functions of modern day priests, teachers, ambassadors, astronomers, genealogists, philosophers, musicians, theologians, scientists, poets and judges. They underwent lengthy training: some sources say 20 years. Druids led all public rituals, which were normally held within fenced groves of sacred trees. In their role as priests, "they acted not as mediators between God and man, but as directors of ritual, as shamans guiding and containing the rites." Most leaders mentioned in the surviving records were male. It is not known whether female Druids were considered equal to their male counterparts, or whether they were restricted to special responsibilities. References to women exercising religious power might have been deleted from the record by Christian monks during the Celtic Christian era.

Since ancient Druidism was an oral tradition, they did not have a set of scriptures as do Christianity and other "religions of the book. 2 "Some Druidic "teachings survived in the Bardic colleges in Wales, Ireland and Scotland which remained active until the 17th century, in medieval manuscripts, and in oral tradition, folk lore and ritual." 3

Druidism and other Neopagan religions are currently experiencing a rapid growth. Many people are attempting to rediscover their roots, their ancestral heritage. For many people in North America, their ancestors can be traced back to Celtic/Druidic countries.

Most modern Druids connect the origin of their religion to the ancient Celtic people. However, historical data is scarce. The Druids may well have been active in Britain and perhaps in northern Europe before the advent of the Celts.

Many academics believe that the ancestors of the Celts were the Proto-Indo European culture who lived near the Black Sea circa 4000 BCE. Some migrated in a South-Westerly direction to create the cultures of Thrace and Greece; others moved North-West to form the Baltic, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic cultures. Evidence of a Proto-Celtic Unetice or Urnfield culture has been found in what is now Slovakia circa 1000 BCE. This evolved into a group of loosely linked tribes which formed the Celtic culture circa 800 BCE. By 450 BCE they had expanded into Spain; by 400 BCE they were in Northern Italy, and by 270 BCE, they had migrated into Galatia (central Turkey). By 200 BCE, they had occupied the British Isles, Brittany, much of modern France, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, North West Spain, and their isolated Galatia settlement in Turkey.

Although the Celts had a written language, it was rarely used. Their religious and philosophical beliefs were preserved in an oral tradition. Little of their early history remains. Most of our information comes from Greek and Roman writers, who may well have been heavily biased (the Celts invaded Rome in 390 BCE and Greece in 279 BCE). Other data comes from the codification (and modification) of Celtic myth cycles by Christian monks. The latter included the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Cycle of Kings, the Invasion Races Cycle from Ireland, and The Mabinogion from Wales. Unfortunately, much Celtic history and religion has been lost or distorted by an overlay of Christianity.

The Christian Church adsorbed much of Celtic religion: many Pagan Gods and Goddesses became Christian saints; sacred springs and wells were preserved and associated with saints; many Pagan temple sites became the location of cathedrals. By the 7th Century CE, Druidism itself was destroyed or continued deeply underground throughout most of the formerly Celtic lands. There is some evidence that Pagan religions did survive in isolated areas of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the 20th Century.

Answer 2

Yes.

Modern Druids are a recognized religion in the British Isles.

Although they claim direct descent from the original Druids of the Dark Ages, they are actually a neo-Pagan religion similar to Wicca and Asatru.

Answer 3

Druids have been a religious group longer than Christianity.

Ask for information on them And I will answer.

Answer 4

Go with Reigan.
I am a Celtic designer and researcher, she is right.
A little known fact, a druid would clothe themselves with the skin of a bear, or other animal to seek guidance from the animal spiritual world while they slept under a yew tree.
A yew tree in Celtic times held great power and significance,
almost like your 'tree of knowledge' in Catholicism.
The people of the villages were usually scared shitless of them.

Answer 5

Polythesism and unotheism dominated pre-Christian religion in Ireland. Some 374 names of gods and goddesses have been recorded from early documents of the period. In addition to great gods, Celtics saw the world as teeming with supernatural beings. Some aspects of these beliefs have survived, including beliefs about fairies, have survived into the modern era. Three levels of social ranking according to depth of mastery of knowledge were used in Celtic Ireland. First were Druids, next philosopher poets, and lastly, bards. Scholars are uncertain if women were included in Druid category.

Druids

Druids were religious specialists among the pre-Christian Celts. The Druids were considered both protectors and promoters of society and embodied the survival and posterity of society. As such, Druids were exempt from serving in war, and were the guardians of tradition, genealogy, and law. Druids would sometimes serve as judges and peacemakers. Since the Druids were considered to be conversant in a divine language, they would interpret perceived divine communications. Druids were viewed as prophets, diviners, astrologers (determining lucky and unlucky days), healers (via spiritual means, protection against evil), were able to shape-shift, to conjure, and sometimes exhibited the ability of to fly.

Shape-shifters were said to be able to transform from human into animal forms. In Irish magic and witchcraft lore, there were three types of shape-shifters:

super-humans with the ability to change form by choice;
a form imposed on another person as punishment or revenge; and

a creature that can be transformed for a special purpose.
Shape shifting, while attributed to act of will, was more often the result of a magic practice, usually by a Druid. Belief in shape-shifting persisted into modern times where fairies were believed to change at will and witches could change into animal form, often a hare or a cat.

Answer 6

Yes i have a friend who is a druid and is deviout

Answer 7

Yes

Answer 8

I agree Riegan wins hands down. Pagan does not = Wicca!

They also used a similar system to runes called Ogham.

Answer 9

yes,
anyone can form a religious 'group' if u have 2 or more to follow u..

Answer 10

Very much so. Here is a link to one of their websites that is very insightful.

Bright Blessings )O(