Druidism and Bardism
By Robert Ambelain
“It is the destiny reserved to great ideas and great thoughts to somber after flashing like a meteor in a dark night, or even in the abysses. Not being able to be filtered through small minds (spirits), quickly they lose their character and gradually are deformed until they are only a caricature of themselves” said Georges Grimm (1).
During centuries, the high and pure theodicy of the Druids illuminated the Celtic lands of Amorica and of far off Thule. But because the men of the Oaks did not put anything down in writing, since for them the oral tradition never risks becoming a dead heritage, because of the living words that carry it, it is also subjected to changes each time it is communicated orally so as to go through a sort of “transmigration,” according to the just words of Dumézil. And if, as the teachings of the Druids would have it, the world will not cease to be an ideal of Finality, then our tradition also continues without the crystallization of a “dogma” and without the prison of a “text.”
Therefore, given the fragility of this transmission and the terrible persecutions that it was submitted to, because of the roman conquest first, then by Christianity when it came to power, would it be reasonable to think that it came down to us without mortal alteration?
This is a work purely historical and philosophical which must precede theological studies, metaphysics and philosophy. It therefore necessarily has its place at the beginning of this study.
What exactly was the religion of the Celts? And what consisted of the teachings of the Druids?
For the profane, these two questions are only one. For certain historians as well unfortunately! And yet there was certainly
Notes:
Page 167
as much difference between these two then there was between the intimate thoughts and the teachings of Pythagoras and that with which his successors contented themselves with; the acoumastiques…
What was the Celtic cult (religion) and where did the Gods which they worshipped come from? This is a particularly thorny problem, if we think that the written documents are absolutely faulty in this regard. A couple of names of Deities collected from inscriptions most of the time disfigured by Latin transcriptions; a few vague bits of information transmitted by Julius Caesar and by a few ancient writers; these are about the only sources of information that the historian can dig into, tells us Jules Leflocq (1).
And yet the Celtic traditions have the mysterious privilege of being surrounded even to this day with a strange prestige. Perhaps this is because spiritual traditions, keeping nothing back, tend to prostitute their most sacred arcana under the fever of pseudo-scientific explanations whereas the tradition of the Men of If, of the Birch and of the Oak remain enigmatic and distant, like the effigies of dead divinities (gods), and in the midst of the chaos of legend no prestigious theurgy can continue to be animated.
Yet one day their seemed to be a new breath on the embers of a dying fire, that of Bardism. Therefore lets us see to its genesis.
In the VIth century in Great and in Small Britain the lot of Druidism was decided.
But in Ireland the organised druidic colleges continued to exist contrary to their confrères (Brothers) from Britain and on the continent which were reduced to isolated groups under the roman conquest. Unfortunately, like in Gaul the jealousy of the Knights made itself known more than the influence of the Druidism as well as the hostility of certain Irish kings which favoured the Christian missionaries. The Order broke, the Druids disappeared in Erin and the Filid or Bards did not conserve at the assembly of Druim Ceta in 574, parts of their privileges because of the intervention of Saint-Colomban (2).
The cooperation of the Druids, Bards and Ovates was destroyed by the influence of Christianity at the beginning of the VIIth century. Like the Filid in Ireland which had survived the disaster, the Bards, their Brothers maintained what was left of the Great Celtic Britain and Welsh (tradition); and this for centuries. The Druids and Ovates having disappeared, only the Bards represented the tradition. However, many of these converted such as Saint Sulio and Hyvarnion, whereas others became zealots of the Church and did not communicate--- like the confraternity of builders did with Pythagorean symbols---- the essential thought of
Notes:
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Druidism. When ecclesiastical intolerance supported by the power of the English would become too strong, the Welsh bards dispersed and met in secret at Cyvail (1), as an essential group of three members. In Ireland, like it was for the Druids in Gaul, it is to teachings that the Filid would dedicate themselves, thereby substituting the Druids.
In Amorica-Brittany, the Bards over generation and generation would lose their cultural character and become simple popular signers. However, the Bards of Wales would remain a sort of aristocracy of the spirit and operate, within the omnipotence of Catholicism, a curious work on the legacy of the Druids of the past. They systematically erased in these traditions all traces of the polytheism of the old Celts and carefully preserved the philosophy of ancient Druidism, no matter how distant it could be from Christianity, and even certain mythical personifications of pre-Christian myths. However, in the North of Wales in the Gwynedd, the Bards were reduced to silence after the last Welsh insurrection against England in 1415 and with the death of Owen Glyndwr.
In the middle of the 15th century after an Eisteddfod held at Caermarthen bardic rules, at least prosodic, are reported around the Merioneth and the Flint. In the south, which was more prosperous, there were regular bardic sessions, the bards of Caermarthen were absorbed in the subtle literary refinements, and those of Glamorgan pursued, at the end of the Christian Middle-Ages, their mythological and philosophical investigations. Hence succeeds to (the phase of) ancient Druidism, a second phase: a Bardic Néo-Druidism which is not exempt from Christian influences. These texts which were long transmitted orally and in secret, will be gathered and published much later. They are the Triads.
The Triads are aphorisms, always developed based on three principal points, probably to etch them more easily in the memory of the Mabinog, or disciple. There are historical, moral, judicial, theological, poetic, etc. Triads. The total (number) is considerable. In fact, during the High Middle Ages, they were probably the customary law of the Isle of Britain.
The first 46 Triads were translated for the first time by Adolphe Pictet in 1853 in his small work entitled: Le Mystère des Bardes de l’Ile de Bretagne (The Mysteries of the Bard of the Isle of Britain) or The doctrine of the Welsh Bards of the Middle Ages on God, Future Life, and the Transmigration of the Souls!
They were part of a yet unpublished manuscript at the time of the translation entitled: Gyfrinach Beirdd Ynys Prydain which the judicious and knowledgeable Sharon Turner rendered quite a detailed account of in her Vindication of the genuiness of the ancient british poems. It is a collection, made during different epochs, of Celtic precepts on art, poetry and song, as well as on moral and theological questions.
Notes:
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For the others, they are drawn from a manuscript collection by Lwellyn Sion, bard of Glamorgan, and constituted around the year 1560. They came to us in a much simpler way as noted by Pictet:
“The bardic corporations, we are told, which were maintained in Wales through successive invasions by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and the English under the form of a kind of Freemasonry, preserved with Celtic tenacity the debris of traditional ancient national beliefs and the Triads which we now possess are most certainly their (the national beliefs) last expression…”
Yves Berthou and Le Fustec gave a French translation of these in their : Les Triades Bardes de l’Ile de Bretagne (The Bardic Triads of the Isle of Britain) published in 1906 through the library of the journal L’Occident. Afterwards, several other works republished this translation or one similar. And Paul Lamirault also translated a complimentary series to these first 46.
The Mobinoggion gives a large number of them but they are of no philosophical interest. In an earlier work (1), we gave close to 160 of them because of their philosophical or metaphysical interest. Those of the Mabinoggion like those of the Llywelyn Sion, are of such a character as to be far removed from Christianity and as to make it impossible to accuse the Bards of introducing Christian material in these and others that follow. We must see, in some of the similar points (between Druidism and Christianity), simply the traditional access to Truths which is common to many Cults (Religions). And we will find as much vedic traditional material in Bardism as we esteem coming from Christianity!…The esoteric tradition of the Triads is a initatic tradition, which has come down to us by oral transmission, and then by means of manuscripts.
“To what extent has the book of Bardism transmitted the beliefs of the Druids? It is impossible to determine today, says Sharon Turner (2). But everything leads us to believe that the teachings of the Bards derive from druidic sources.”
What are in fact the teachings of the Bards?
Above man there is God, One, Perfect, Infinite, Supreme Power, Supreme Intelligence, Supreme Love; and (there is also) the soul, the identical principal in all beings in essence and in origin; and the soul accomplishes its destiny by passing through all possible and imaginable shapes of existence, (which are) separated into three phases:
a) The original state, where it (the soul) is submitted to Fatality and Evil (the Circle of Anwn)
b) The state of humanity, where it benefits from free will (Circle of Abred)
c) The state of beatitude (blessed state) where it benefits from the gifts from God (Circle of Gwefyd)
Notes:
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But it is not by simply by taking its place in the ranks of humanity that the soul has subtracted the evil of the Circle of Anwn, not until being integrated definitively in the circle of Gwyefyd can it elevate itself into the first joys of the beatitude.
Even in the Circle of Abred the soul which forgets its duty falls back because of Evil under the yoke of fatal Necessity. Whereas, in contrast, the Soul which is concerned about its Destiny, moves onward existence after existence, if not by a continuous progress, at least by its sustained efforts, towards the state of beatitude.
Let us follow the degrees of Existence or perhaps it is better said: the vicissitudes of the soul, during its diverse stages “without which there will be no accomplishment for her.”
At the beginning of life in the lowest depths of existence, as translated by Owen, the animated being, born from death, is without self-conscience, without light, without will, without law, submitted entirely to Evil and Fatality. How will it leave this state of abasement? Not by himself, since everything is under the empire of Necessity, but by the help of God which communicates to him, by the virtue of his mercy, a part of (his) Knowledge and Love, and by doing so delivers him (the soul) from Death.
Therefore all he does is become man that is he enters into the possession of his intelligence to know the Good, and into his will to accomplish it. He is not, by doing this, freed from the enemies which held him earlier in a complete dependence. The soul is suspended in a sort of balance between necessity and liberty (freedom) between good and evil, but he is now able to either go to one or the other by the choice and effort of his will: his destiny becomes a battle for which beatitude is the prize.
In this life-battle what are the enemies (adversaries) of man? In him, it is the tendency for Evil, outside him, it is Cythraul, Evil (2). And what are his supports? In him, it is the capacity for Good, above him, it is God. The Battle commences in the human condition, and the victory will continue eternally in the state of beatitude.
The soul triumphs in two ways: either by its own efforts, by affirming itself against the surprises of the senses, by finding clarity through the knowledge of good and by fortifying itself by the exercise of its liberty (freedom), either by help from above, by having confidence in the justice and love of God which is communicated to his creature because of his needs and merits. It may also happen that it advances like this from life to life by an onward progress to a superior state which is already the beatitude. More often (however) by liberty, it rises from abasement to abasement. At times, precipitated by being on the cusp of happiness a fall occurs which is proportional to its faults,
Notes:
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it falls (once again) under the empire of Necessity by the obscuration of knowledge and the weakness of its will, it falls even into the abysses of Evil by pride and dishonesty, but mainly by a cruelty which is equal to that of a brute. Through this, it has returned to its state of abasement from which it must, with a new effort, return to the accomplishment of its Destiny.
It is only when liberated through death from the Necessity for Evil that Cythraul is vanquished forever and the soul can enter the tranquil joys of the beatitude. However, it cannot penetrate into Keugant, the Circle of the Infinite, where God resides alone, because he alone is eternal, immutable and perfect.
***
Now let us see what the teachings of the Druids were, and to do so let us question their contemporaries, those that could approach them and question them that is Cesar and certain Latin writers and the Fathers of the Church which carefully gathered the essentials of the Celtic “heresy” to better fight it.
On the origin of Druidism, we know very little.
The author of the Philosophumena, Hippolytus of Rome (1) tells us that “the Druids are fervent adepts of Pythagorean philosophy. It is Zalmoxes, the slave and disciple of Pythagoras of Samos, which taught them. By their predictions and by their magical practices, the Druids acquired amongst the Celts a great influence.”
Valéry Maxime offers to us the same hypothesis:
“I would consider the Gauls crazy if the sentiment of these wearer of breeches on the future of life was not (also) that found under the Greek mantle of Pythagoras…” (2)
For Polystor, it is the contrary which is the case. For this author it is the Master of Samos who would have travelled to Gaul to study with the Druids (3).
Saint-Clement supports the thesis of Polyster, because, as he tells us: “the resemblance of the doctrines adopted by the Greeks with that of the Druids completely justifies it.”
Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras, also confirms Polyster and makes of his Master a disciple of the Druids (4).
What characterizes above all else the teachings of the Druids is that they are presented under the aspects of a religion absolutely different from the normal (ordinary) Cults (religions) of the time (Epoch).
“Oh Druids, says Lucan, to thee alone was it given to
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know the Gods and the Celestial Powers, and to you alone to be condemned for ignoring them!...” (1).
And Don Martin comments on Lucan:
“The body (of teachings) of the religion of the Gauls has always been essentially different from all other religions of the world” (2).
How can we believe says Cicero, the sincerity of the oath and word of these nations (the Volusques and the Allobroges) when their customs and genius are in such disagreement with the rest of the world? Other peoples go to war to defend their religion but they do it to beat that of all others! The former invoke the mercy of the Gods, when doing battle, the latter carry arms against the Immortals themselves!” (3).
Behind this absolute iconoclasm which the Gaul’s manifested during their southern conquests by laughing at the site of pagan statues painted and ornamented with clothes like human beings, and behind the narrowness of vision which the Latin commentators could not understand, is the veiled idea of a Supreme God, higher, and more beautiful than all the roman caricatures offered to the people.
The Historian Henri Martin deduces from this:
“Where does the hatred that the Gauls have for foreign Cults come from, if it is not from a sentiment about the superiority of their own religion? The Celtic peoples amongst the Germans and Romans resemble the Jewish People surrounded by an idolatry which abhors combat” (4).
Cesar himself noticed this truly spiritualistic nature of the Celtic religion and contrasted it in parallel with that of the Germanic cults:
“In addition, the Germans only recognize the Gods they see, and by which they receive visible assistance which manifests itself: the Sun, the Earth, the Moon…” (5)
And later he attempts to establish, using the roman classification of gods, a comparison with that of the Gauls:
On these gods (Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva) the Gauls have almost the same opinion as other nations…” (6)
As we can see he does not affirm an identical symbolism but rather a vague resemblance, an ‘almost like’….
What then was this religion, and what made it so strange? One thing is that it leads to monotheism while the cultural practices of the time were polytheistic. In fact,
Notes:
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it is the case for many contemporary great religions as well: Catholicism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, by which the veneration of saintly figures makes them forget the Original Creator and where the cult offered to one or another Hypostasis absorbs the faithful to the detriment of the Absolute.
“Hence as Jean Reynaud (1) tells us, amongst the most backwater people in the Roman church, the cult of saints and angels covers over so much the name of God, that if a pagan were to be resurrected at this time, he could have the same disgust toward them as the Gauls did and judge them polytheistic.”
Monotheism was indisputably the foundation of the religion of the Druids. Esus is the Jehovah of the Gauls Don Martin tells us (2). Jean Reynaud declares that this religion was: “essentially monotheistic” (3) and he adds that Essus is God “free and absolute” and the representative of Providence amongst our fathers. According to Henri Martin (4), “the Superior Being adored by the Gauls is the Necessary and Universal Being, the Principal of Life, the First Cause.”
Sharon Turner the celticist writer leans towards this opinion also: “It would seem that breton Druids had as elevated an idea of the Supreme Divinity as that of certain Greek philosophers”(5).
In the same order of ideas, Amédée Thierry admits that for the Cymric tradition of Heus, which he identifies with the Gaulish Esus, had at times “the character of the God “par excellence,” of the Supreme Being” (6).
And yet, the contrary opinion is just as plausible, if we limit ourselves to others aspects of this mysterious religion! “If we follow the impressions of Latin writers,” says Jean Reynaud, “we would tend to believe that if we were amongst the Druids we would be among polytheists, more so then in a neighbourhood of full blown Jehovah monotheists.”
We cannot in fact neglect the passage from Cesar in his Gallic Wars which says that the Great Gods of the Gauls were 5 in number, while assimilating them to Roman deities, no more so than the famous verses of Lucan which place side to side on a Celtic altar: Teutatis, Esus and Taranis (7).
And yet this polytheism is contradicted by the incontestable authority of the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the Church. What to conclude? First, this, that some considered the Celtic religion in its sacerdotal purity, while others in its
Notes:
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popular aspects, that is inferior and corrupted and infiltrated by foreign (elements)or by the old animism behind which was the survival of beliefs from pre-history. Also that it is another mystery from the old Indo-Aryan Theodicy, which prefers that the Absolute the God-One remain inaccessible to man and that only his Eternal Attributes be accessible to the Theologian. And with regards to the Monad that only its negative definition can be retained by Reason.
We know that to consider the religion of a people we must understand its dogma, its ceremonies, and its symbols, which are witnesses to its true character. And to never consider only under the guise of the aspects reported by the observations of strangers, which are often partial and always incomplete.
Therefore, the monotheism of the Gauls, neglected or ignored by Latin authors, appears clearly in the monuments of the druidic cult, which is essentially solar, (and therefore based on transcendental knowledge of the Monad), and in the traditions reported in the Triads composed by the Welsh Bards.
Otherwise, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Saint Clement tell us, that contrary to the affirmations of the Emperor Julian, “philosophy (as it was understood at the time) meaning a belief in a divine unity, is not a belief peculiar to the Jewish people, but also of the Druids, the Mages and the Brahmins (1).
And Origen is in agreement with his adversary Celsus, declares that the Druids of Gaul profess religious theories: “which conform to those of the Jews” (2).
***
When it comes to the pre-existence of the soul, and its eternal essence, and its successive incarnations in all sorts of material forms, the ancient authors report the same certainty with which we agree:
Pomponius Mela tells us that in fact, “The Druids teach that the souls are eternal” (3).
“They do not say it is eternal like Strabon, Cesar, Diodorus: they say it is eternal, meaning, that it has an undefinable length (of life) back into the past and into the future” (4). This thought by Jean Reynaud is full of importance.
And Lucan confirms the opinion of Pomponius Mela:
“According to you says Lucan, while addressing the Druids, the Shadows do not reach the silent domains of Asphodel, nor into the pale kingdoms of Hades. On the contrary, the soul, the same soul, governs in another world, and are members of another
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Body. And if what your hymns say are true, they teach that death is but a step (a stage) in an eternal life” (1).
Only Diodorus of Sicily, uses the term “immortal” :
“Amongst them, he says, reigned the Doctrine of Pythagoras, who held that the soul of man is immortal, and that the time of it existing being accomplished, it passes into another body and comes back to life…” (2).
“In the first place, says Cesar, the Druids are persuaded that the souls do not perish and that after death they pass from one to another…”(3).
J. Leflocq tells us, “the words of Lucan bring us to the same conclusion and Cesar’s expression leads us to believe that the living have already lived and that the dead will live again. Further on, basing this on the authority of Lucan’s term: orbe alio, and using a commentary from Plutarch in his Treaty on the Moon, he shows that the soul rises from sphere to sphere in the infinite circle of eternal migrations” (4).
Also, Amédée Thierry concludes that:
“the two notions combined, of the Metempsychosis and of future life, formed the basis of the philosophical system of the religion of the Druids.” (5)
Druidism can (therefore) definitively be summarized by 4 fundamental postulations:
Robert Ambelain
Notes:
During centuries, the high and pure theodicy of the Druids illuminated the Celtic lands of Amorica and of far off Thule. But because the men of the Oaks did not put anything down in writing, since for them the oral tradition never risks becoming a dead heritage, because of the living words that carry it, it is also subjected to changes each time it is communicated orally so as to go through a sort of “transmigration,” according to the just words of Dumézil. And if, as the teachings of the Druids would have it, the world will not cease to be an ideal of Finality, then our tradition also continues without the crystallization of a “dogma” and without the prison of a “text.”
Therefore, given the fragility of this transmission and the terrible persecutions that it was submitted to, because of the roman conquest first, then by Christianity when it came to power, would it be reasonable to think that it came down to us without mortal alteration?
This is a work purely historical and philosophical which must precede theological studies, metaphysics and philosophy. It therefore necessarily has its place at the beginning of this study.
What exactly was the religion of the Celts? And what consisted of the teachings of the Druids?
For the profane, these two questions are only one. For certain historians as well unfortunately! And yet there was certainly
Notes:
- Georges Grimm: La Religion de bouddha. (The Religion Buddha)
Page 167
as much difference between these two then there was between the intimate thoughts and the teachings of Pythagoras and that with which his successors contented themselves with; the acoumastiques…
What was the Celtic cult (religion) and where did the Gods which they worshipped come from? This is a particularly thorny problem, if we think that the written documents are absolutely faulty in this regard. A couple of names of Deities collected from inscriptions most of the time disfigured by Latin transcriptions; a few vague bits of information transmitted by Julius Caesar and by a few ancient writers; these are about the only sources of information that the historian can dig into, tells us Jules Leflocq (1).
And yet the Celtic traditions have the mysterious privilege of being surrounded even to this day with a strange prestige. Perhaps this is because spiritual traditions, keeping nothing back, tend to prostitute their most sacred arcana under the fever of pseudo-scientific explanations whereas the tradition of the Men of If, of the Birch and of the Oak remain enigmatic and distant, like the effigies of dead divinities (gods), and in the midst of the chaos of legend no prestigious theurgy can continue to be animated.
Yet one day their seemed to be a new breath on the embers of a dying fire, that of Bardism. Therefore lets us see to its genesis.
In the VIth century in Great and in Small Britain the lot of Druidism was decided.
But in Ireland the organised druidic colleges continued to exist contrary to their confrères (Brothers) from Britain and on the continent which were reduced to isolated groups under the roman conquest. Unfortunately, like in Gaul the jealousy of the Knights made itself known more than the influence of the Druidism as well as the hostility of certain Irish kings which favoured the Christian missionaries. The Order broke, the Druids disappeared in Erin and the Filid or Bards did not conserve at the assembly of Druim Ceta in 574, parts of their privileges because of the intervention of Saint-Colomban (2).
The cooperation of the Druids, Bards and Ovates was destroyed by the influence of Christianity at the beginning of the VIIth century. Like the Filid in Ireland which had survived the disaster, the Bards, their Brothers maintained what was left of the Great Celtic Britain and Welsh (tradition); and this for centuries. The Druids and Ovates having disappeared, only the Bards represented the tradition. However, many of these converted such as Saint Sulio and Hyvarnion, whereas others became zealots of the Church and did not communicate--- like the confraternity of builders did with Pythagorean symbols---- the essential thought of
Notes:
- Jules Leflocq: Etudes de Mythologie Celtique (Study of Celtic Mythology)
- A very nice work by Morvan Marchal in the jorunal « Nemeton ».
Page 168
Druidism. When ecclesiastical intolerance supported by the power of the English would become too strong, the Welsh bards dispersed and met in secret at Cyvail (1), as an essential group of three members. In Ireland, like it was for the Druids in Gaul, it is to teachings that the Filid would dedicate themselves, thereby substituting the Druids.
In Amorica-Brittany, the Bards over generation and generation would lose their cultural character and become simple popular signers. However, the Bards of Wales would remain a sort of aristocracy of the spirit and operate, within the omnipotence of Catholicism, a curious work on the legacy of the Druids of the past. They systematically erased in these traditions all traces of the polytheism of the old Celts and carefully preserved the philosophy of ancient Druidism, no matter how distant it could be from Christianity, and even certain mythical personifications of pre-Christian myths. However, in the North of Wales in the Gwynedd, the Bards were reduced to silence after the last Welsh insurrection against England in 1415 and with the death of Owen Glyndwr.
In the middle of the 15th century after an Eisteddfod held at Caermarthen bardic rules, at least prosodic, are reported around the Merioneth and the Flint. In the south, which was more prosperous, there were regular bardic sessions, the bards of Caermarthen were absorbed in the subtle literary refinements, and those of Glamorgan pursued, at the end of the Christian Middle-Ages, their mythological and philosophical investigations. Hence succeeds to (the phase of) ancient Druidism, a second phase: a Bardic Néo-Druidism which is not exempt from Christian influences. These texts which were long transmitted orally and in secret, will be gathered and published much later. They are the Triads.
The Triads are aphorisms, always developed based on three principal points, probably to etch them more easily in the memory of the Mabinog, or disciple. There are historical, moral, judicial, theological, poetic, etc. Triads. The total (number) is considerable. In fact, during the High Middle Ages, they were probably the customary law of the Isle of Britain.
The first 46 Triads were translated for the first time by Adolphe Pictet in 1853 in his small work entitled: Le Mystère des Bardes de l’Ile de Bretagne (The Mysteries of the Bard of the Isle of Britain) or The doctrine of the Welsh Bards of the Middle Ages on God, Future Life, and the Transmigration of the Souls!
They were part of a yet unpublished manuscript at the time of the translation entitled: Gyfrinach Beirdd Ynys Prydain which the judicious and knowledgeable Sharon Turner rendered quite a detailed account of in her Vindication of the genuiness of the ancient british poems. It is a collection, made during different epochs, of Celtic precepts on art, poetry and song, as well as on moral and theological questions.
Notes:
- Cyvail: pronounced “Kouvail”
Page 169
For the others, they are drawn from a manuscript collection by Lwellyn Sion, bard of Glamorgan, and constituted around the year 1560. They came to us in a much simpler way as noted by Pictet:
“The bardic corporations, we are told, which were maintained in Wales through successive invasions by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and the English under the form of a kind of Freemasonry, preserved with Celtic tenacity the debris of traditional ancient national beliefs and the Triads which we now possess are most certainly their (the national beliefs) last expression…”
Yves Berthou and Le Fustec gave a French translation of these in their : Les Triades Bardes de l’Ile de Bretagne (The Bardic Triads of the Isle of Britain) published in 1906 through the library of the journal L’Occident. Afterwards, several other works republished this translation or one similar. And Paul Lamirault also translated a complimentary series to these first 46.
The Mobinoggion gives a large number of them but they are of no philosophical interest. In an earlier work (1), we gave close to 160 of them because of their philosophical or metaphysical interest. Those of the Mabinoggion like those of the Llywelyn Sion, are of such a character as to be far removed from Christianity and as to make it impossible to accuse the Bards of introducing Christian material in these and others that follow. We must see, in some of the similar points (between Druidism and Christianity), simply the traditional access to Truths which is common to many Cults (Religions). And we will find as much vedic traditional material in Bardism as we esteem coming from Christianity!…The esoteric tradition of the Triads is a initatic tradition, which has come down to us by oral transmission, and then by means of manuscripts.
“To what extent has the book of Bardism transmitted the beliefs of the Druids? It is impossible to determine today, says Sharon Turner (2). But everything leads us to believe that the teachings of the Bards derive from druidic sources.”
What are in fact the teachings of the Bards?
Above man there is God, One, Perfect, Infinite, Supreme Power, Supreme Intelligence, Supreme Love; and (there is also) the soul, the identical principal in all beings in essence and in origin; and the soul accomplishes its destiny by passing through all possible and imaginable shapes of existence, (which are) separated into three phases:
a) The original state, where it (the soul) is submitted to Fatality and Evil (the Circle of Anwn)
b) The state of humanity, where it benefits from free will (Circle of Abred)
c) The state of beatitude (blessed state) where it benefits from the gifts from God (Circle of Gwefyd)
Notes:
- Robert Ambelain: Au pied des menhirs (At the feet of the Menhirs)
- Sharon Turner : « Vindication, etc. »
Page 170
But it is not by simply by taking its place in the ranks of humanity that the soul has subtracted the evil of the Circle of Anwn, not until being integrated definitively in the circle of Gwyefyd can it elevate itself into the first joys of the beatitude.
Even in the Circle of Abred the soul which forgets its duty falls back because of Evil under the yoke of fatal Necessity. Whereas, in contrast, the Soul which is concerned about its Destiny, moves onward existence after existence, if not by a continuous progress, at least by its sustained efforts, towards the state of beatitude.
Let us follow the degrees of Existence or perhaps it is better said: the vicissitudes of the soul, during its diverse stages “without which there will be no accomplishment for her.”
At the beginning of life in the lowest depths of existence, as translated by Owen, the animated being, born from death, is without self-conscience, without light, without will, without law, submitted entirely to Evil and Fatality. How will it leave this state of abasement? Not by himself, since everything is under the empire of Necessity, but by the help of God which communicates to him, by the virtue of his mercy, a part of (his) Knowledge and Love, and by doing so delivers him (the soul) from Death.
Therefore all he does is become man that is he enters into the possession of his intelligence to know the Good, and into his will to accomplish it. He is not, by doing this, freed from the enemies which held him earlier in a complete dependence. The soul is suspended in a sort of balance between necessity and liberty (freedom) between good and evil, but he is now able to either go to one or the other by the choice and effort of his will: his destiny becomes a battle for which beatitude is the prize.
In this life-battle what are the enemies (adversaries) of man? In him, it is the tendency for Evil, outside him, it is Cythraul, Evil (2). And what are his supports? In him, it is the capacity for Good, above him, it is God. The Battle commences in the human condition, and the victory will continue eternally in the state of beatitude.
The soul triumphs in two ways: either by its own efforts, by affirming itself against the surprises of the senses, by finding clarity through the knowledge of good and by fortifying itself by the exercise of its liberty (freedom), either by help from above, by having confidence in the justice and love of God which is communicated to his creature because of his needs and merits. It may also happen that it advances like this from life to life by an onward progress to a superior state which is already the beatitude. More often (however) by liberty, it rises from abasement to abasement. At times, precipitated by being on the cusp of happiness a fall occurs which is proportional to its faults,
Notes:
- Owen Jones: Archéologie de Myvyr. (Archeology of Myvyr.)
- Pronounced « Koussraôl ».
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it falls (once again) under the empire of Necessity by the obscuration of knowledge and the weakness of its will, it falls even into the abysses of Evil by pride and dishonesty, but mainly by a cruelty which is equal to that of a brute. Through this, it has returned to its state of abasement from which it must, with a new effort, return to the accomplishment of its Destiny.
It is only when liberated through death from the Necessity for Evil that Cythraul is vanquished forever and the soul can enter the tranquil joys of the beatitude. However, it cannot penetrate into Keugant, the Circle of the Infinite, where God resides alone, because he alone is eternal, immutable and perfect.
***
Now let us see what the teachings of the Druids were, and to do so let us question their contemporaries, those that could approach them and question them that is Cesar and certain Latin writers and the Fathers of the Church which carefully gathered the essentials of the Celtic “heresy” to better fight it.
On the origin of Druidism, we know very little.
The author of the Philosophumena, Hippolytus of Rome (1) tells us that “the Druids are fervent adepts of Pythagorean philosophy. It is Zalmoxes, the slave and disciple of Pythagoras of Samos, which taught them. By their predictions and by their magical practices, the Druids acquired amongst the Celts a great influence.”
Valéry Maxime offers to us the same hypothesis:
“I would consider the Gauls crazy if the sentiment of these wearer of breeches on the future of life was not (also) that found under the Greek mantle of Pythagoras…” (2)
For Polystor, it is the contrary which is the case. For this author it is the Master of Samos who would have travelled to Gaul to study with the Druids (3).
Saint-Clement supports the thesis of Polyster, because, as he tells us: “the resemblance of the doctrines adopted by the Greeks with that of the Druids completely justifies it.”
Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras, also confirms Polyster and makes of his Master a disciple of the Druids (4).
What characterizes above all else the teachings of the Druids is that they are presented under the aspects of a religion absolutely different from the normal (ordinary) Cults (religions) of the time (Epoch).
“Oh Druids, says Lucan, to thee alone was it given to
Notes:
- Hippolytus : Philosophumena, I, III.
- Valère Maxime: Book II, chap. VI, no. 10.
- Iamblichus: The Life of Pythagoras.
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know the Gods and the Celestial Powers, and to you alone to be condemned for ignoring them!...” (1).
And Don Martin comments on Lucan:
“The body (of teachings) of the religion of the Gauls has always been essentially different from all other religions of the world” (2).
How can we believe says Cicero, the sincerity of the oath and word of these nations (the Volusques and the Allobroges) when their customs and genius are in such disagreement with the rest of the world? Other peoples go to war to defend their religion but they do it to beat that of all others! The former invoke the mercy of the Gods, when doing battle, the latter carry arms against the Immortals themselves!” (3).
Behind this absolute iconoclasm which the Gaul’s manifested during their southern conquests by laughing at the site of pagan statues painted and ornamented with clothes like human beings, and behind the narrowness of vision which the Latin commentators could not understand, is the veiled idea of a Supreme God, higher, and more beautiful than all the roman caricatures offered to the people.
The Historian Henri Martin deduces from this:
“Where does the hatred that the Gauls have for foreign Cults come from, if it is not from a sentiment about the superiority of their own religion? The Celtic peoples amongst the Germans and Romans resemble the Jewish People surrounded by an idolatry which abhors combat” (4).
Cesar himself noticed this truly spiritualistic nature of the Celtic religion and contrasted it in parallel with that of the Germanic cults:
“In addition, the Germans only recognize the Gods they see, and by which they receive visible assistance which manifests itself: the Sun, the Earth, the Moon…” (5)
And later he attempts to establish, using the roman classification of gods, a comparison with that of the Gauls:
On these gods (Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva) the Gauls have almost the same opinion as other nations…” (6)
As we can see he does not affirm an identical symbolism but rather a vague resemblance, an ‘almost like’….
What then was this religion, and what made it so strange? One thing is that it leads to monotheism while the cultural practices of the time were polytheistic. In fact,
Notes:
- Lucan: Pharsalia, I, 452.
- Dom Martin: La Religion des Gaulois (The Religion of the Gauls), volume I, p.33
- Cicero: Pro Fontéio, chap. XII
- Henri Martin: Histoire de France (History of France), volume I, p.81
- Cesar: The Gallic Wars, VI, 21.
- Cesar: The Gallic Wars, VI, 17.
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it is the case for many contemporary great religions as well: Catholicism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, by which the veneration of saintly figures makes them forget the Original Creator and where the cult offered to one or another Hypostasis absorbs the faithful to the detriment of the Absolute.
“Hence as Jean Reynaud (1) tells us, amongst the most backwater people in the Roman church, the cult of saints and angels covers over so much the name of God, that if a pagan were to be resurrected at this time, he could have the same disgust toward them as the Gauls did and judge them polytheistic.”
Monotheism was indisputably the foundation of the religion of the Druids. Esus is the Jehovah of the Gauls Don Martin tells us (2). Jean Reynaud declares that this religion was: “essentially monotheistic” (3) and he adds that Essus is God “free and absolute” and the representative of Providence amongst our fathers. According to Henri Martin (4), “the Superior Being adored by the Gauls is the Necessary and Universal Being, the Principal of Life, the First Cause.”
Sharon Turner the celticist writer leans towards this opinion also: “It would seem that breton Druids had as elevated an idea of the Supreme Divinity as that of certain Greek philosophers”(5).
In the same order of ideas, Amédée Thierry admits that for the Cymric tradition of Heus, which he identifies with the Gaulish Esus, had at times “the character of the God “par excellence,” of the Supreme Being” (6).
And yet, the contrary opinion is just as plausible, if we limit ourselves to others aspects of this mysterious religion! “If we follow the impressions of Latin writers,” says Jean Reynaud, “we would tend to believe that if we were amongst the Druids we would be among polytheists, more so then in a neighbourhood of full blown Jehovah monotheists.”
We cannot in fact neglect the passage from Cesar in his Gallic Wars which says that the Great Gods of the Gauls were 5 in number, while assimilating them to Roman deities, no more so than the famous verses of Lucan which place side to side on a Celtic altar: Teutatis, Esus and Taranis (7).
And yet this polytheism is contradicted by the incontestable authority of the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the Church. What to conclude? First, this, that some considered the Celtic religion in its sacerdotal purity, while others in its
Notes:
- Jean Reynaud: L’Esprit de la Gaule (The Spirit of Gaul), p.19 and 105.
- Dom Martin: Religions des Gaulois (The Religions of the Gauls)
- Jean Reynaud: L’Esprit de la Gaule (The Spirit of Gaul)
- Sharon Turner: Histoire des Anglos-Saxons (History of the Anglo-Saxons). Volume III, p.285
- Amédée Thiérry: Histoire des Gaulois (History of the Gauls), volume I, p.470
- Cesar: The Gallic Wars, VI, and Lucan: Pharsalia, I, 144.
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popular aspects, that is inferior and corrupted and infiltrated by foreign (elements)or by the old animism behind which was the survival of beliefs from pre-history. Also that it is another mystery from the old Indo-Aryan Theodicy, which prefers that the Absolute the God-One remain inaccessible to man and that only his Eternal Attributes be accessible to the Theologian. And with regards to the Monad that only its negative definition can be retained by Reason.
We know that to consider the religion of a people we must understand its dogma, its ceremonies, and its symbols, which are witnesses to its true character. And to never consider only under the guise of the aspects reported by the observations of strangers, which are often partial and always incomplete.
Therefore, the monotheism of the Gauls, neglected or ignored by Latin authors, appears clearly in the monuments of the druidic cult, which is essentially solar, (and therefore based on transcendental knowledge of the Monad), and in the traditions reported in the Triads composed by the Welsh Bards.
Otherwise, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Saint Clement tell us, that contrary to the affirmations of the Emperor Julian, “philosophy (as it was understood at the time) meaning a belief in a divine unity, is not a belief peculiar to the Jewish people, but also of the Druids, the Mages and the Brahmins (1).
And Origen is in agreement with his adversary Celsus, declares that the Druids of Gaul profess religious theories: “which conform to those of the Jews” (2).
***
When it comes to the pre-existence of the soul, and its eternal essence, and its successive incarnations in all sorts of material forms, the ancient authors report the same certainty with which we agree:
Pomponius Mela tells us that in fact, “The Druids teach that the souls are eternal” (3).
“They do not say it is eternal like Strabon, Cesar, Diodorus: they say it is eternal, meaning, that it has an undefinable length (of life) back into the past and into the future” (4). This thought by Jean Reynaud is full of importance.
And Lucan confirms the opinion of Pomponius Mela:
“According to you says Lucan, while addressing the Druids, the Shadows do not reach the silent domains of Asphodel, nor into the pale kingdoms of Hades. On the contrary, the soul, the same soul, governs in another world, and are members of another
Notes:
- Clement: Protrepticus
- Origen: Contre Celse (Against Celsus) I, 1.
- Book III, chap. II, Aeternas esse animas.
- Jean Reynaud: L’esprit de la Gaule, p.75-76
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Body. And if what your hymns say are true, they teach that death is but a step (a stage) in an eternal life” (1).
Only Diodorus of Sicily, uses the term “immortal” :
“Amongst them, he says, reigned the Doctrine of Pythagoras, who held that the soul of man is immortal, and that the time of it existing being accomplished, it passes into another body and comes back to life…” (2).
“In the first place, says Cesar, the Druids are persuaded that the souls do not perish and that after death they pass from one to another…”(3).
J. Leflocq tells us, “the words of Lucan bring us to the same conclusion and Cesar’s expression leads us to believe that the living have already lived and that the dead will live again. Further on, basing this on the authority of Lucan’s term: orbe alio, and using a commentary from Plutarch in his Treaty on the Moon, he shows that the soul rises from sphere to sphere in the infinite circle of eternal migrations” (4).
Also, Amédée Thierry concludes that:
“the two notions combined, of the Metempsychosis and of future life, formed the basis of the philosophical system of the religion of the Druids.” (5)
Druidism can (therefore) definitively be summarized by 4 fundamental postulations:
- A religion essentially different from others which historical origins are unknown;
- A mono-polytheistic combination and an integral iconoclasm; (we have found no statues before the conquest of Rome)
- A belief in the eternity of the soul
- A palin-genesis and metempsychosis with a limited form of morphogenesis
Robert Ambelain
Notes:
- Lucan: Pharsalia, I, 454.
- Diodorus of Sicily, L. V, p.28 Transl. by Henri Martin (Bibliothèque historique)
- Cesar: The Gallic Wars, Vi, 14
- Jules Leflocq: Etudes de Mythologie Celtique (Study of Celtic Mythology), p.63/64.
- Amédée Thierry : Histoire des Gaulois (History of the Gauls), volume I. p.485.