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Druidry Druid Druidic Treelore
Spiritual Beliefs of Druids
Three was a Celtic holy number which had many different meanings beside the most traditional of the representations, that of the three realms of land, sea, and sky. There were the Three Kindreds (ancestors, fairies, Gods and Goddesses).
Triple faced; triple headed Celtic deities were venerated in various forms with the most popular being the triplicity of the mother goddess energy. Sometimes the three goddesses depicted were identical; while, at other times their overall potency was heightened by showing three different aspects of the maternal role.
The symbol for Awen, /|\ , used since the seventeenth century, consists of three pillars with the outer two leaning into the center one. It represents the three worlds; mind, body, and spirit; sea, land, and sky. Awen also symbolizes inspired creativity, spiritual healing, attunement with the Nature Spirits, the skills of divination and prophecy, and the fluidic flow of the spiritual life force.
To be gifted with Awen is to know, love, and preserve truth with appreciative nurturing commitment. In Druidry there was also a threefold path of Druidic Service which included the Bards, the Ovates, and the Druids. The Bards were singers and story tellers; the Ovates were time travellers and healers; and the Druids were teachers, philosophers, and judges.
Working within the context
of Druidry Celtic Cosmology, the Druids used their power to access the
Otherworld and their knowledge of what they had personally seen to help and
benefit others. The Celts believed so strongly in relying solely on the oral
traditions of poetry, song, and storytelling for passing on knowledge that their
Druids chose not to write down their myths and stories even though the Druids
could read and write in Latin and Greek.
Celtic Druidry Triple Spiral Symbol on Newgrange Orthostat
Image courtesy Michael Fox, Knowth.com
The Druids memorized all the knowledge and wisdom of the communal tribal groups. They were the clan elders, the advisors, astronomers, diviners, judges, healers, historians, musicians, philosophers, and shamans of the Celtic tribes.
Druidic spiritual traditions included deeply held beliefs in an afterlife, fairy mounds, immortality, magic, nature spirits, and supernatural and mythical beings and monsters who made their home in the Otherworld. The boundaries between this world and the Otherworld were adaptable, fluidic, and malleable.
Many Druidic Celtic tales focus on the ability to shapeshift or to morph or phase from the shape of a human into that of an animal, bird, or fish for purposes of knowledge, initiation, training, travel, reconnaissance, or escape. The Celts believed that it was possible to shapeshift back and forth between the human and animal realms of existence.
To the Druids the ethers and dimensions were fluidic and malleable. If one could cognize the underlying matrix and reason for being of the hare, then one could become the hare at least for as long as one could hold the focus of "hareness".
Even if a follower of
Druidry did not want to experience being a particular animal, acquiring some of
the attributes of the animal might be desirable such as the swiftness of the
hare...
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Read Druidry Treelore Articles
Druids as Celtic Shamans,
Glossary Terminology,
Hallowed Symbols and Holy Ground,
Megaliths and Sacred Mounds,
Ogham Storytelling and Oral Traditions,
Reverence for Natural World Animals and Birds,
Spiritual Beliefs of Druids,
Sacred Wheel of Seasons,
Sun Talismans and Holy Wells,
Threefold Path of Bards Ovates Druids,
Treelore and Sacred Groves
Visit other Beliefs Faiths Religions Traditions
Aboriginal Dreamtime,
Alchemy Alchemist,
Cosmos Astronomy,
Buddhism Buddhist,
Christianity Biblical,
Daoist Confucian,
Druidry Treelore,
Heathenry Ásatrú,
Hinduism Vedas,
Islam Sunnah,
Judaism Talmud,
Native American,
Paganism Wiccan,
Shamanism Shaman,
Shintoism Kami
Druidry Druid Druidic Treelore Copyright © 2002-2008 Maureen Grace Burns, Blessings Cornucopia. All Rights Reserved.
Permission to use Image Celtic Druidry Triple Spiral Symbol on Newgrange Orthostat given by Michael Fox © Knowth.com, [http://www.knowth.com/newgrange-interior.htm]. Accessed December
28, 2006.
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