Wausau pagan society was founded by myself Debra Weiss in 2009. I am a Bard in the order of bards ovates and Druids (obod), and I am gleefully looking forward to the summer gathering in Wales this year.
I am an American Druid so I will be the first person to say that my take is influenced by the land I live in, which is not the land of my ancestors. My ancestors are of both Norse and Pictish descent and I know that historically there were Druids in my family tree. So what I’m about to say are a mix of the teachings of the modern order of Druids as well as my own past down wisdom…
There are two main sacred duties of a druid. One is to manage nature & care for the animals the other to preserve all knowledge. Druids practice a form of natural magic that combines elemental magic with Forest craft concepts. I’ll get into more later. But much like Adam and Eve were tasked with caring for the garden of Eden in both the Hebrew and Sumerian version of Genesis, we too feel a need to tend the garden the garden being all of the Earth. So wherever you find yourself, it is your job to care for the creatures around you. Not only animals but trees, plants fungus all of it. This means understanding the balance of nature, of creation and destruction.
The second sacred duty of a Druid being the preservation of all knowledge is specifically so that if God’s forbid, the Earth were to be struck by a cataclysm that wiped out all of humanity, if one Druid survived, they should be able to reseed all of the knowledge of humanity to the survivors. This is why the ancient Druids were schooled for 20 years. They were the doctors and the lawyers of the tribe.
Ancient oral tradition says that structures like Newgrange were actually ancient meteor shower shelters that there was a time where fire rained down from the heaven and threatened to wipe out humanity. It is also ancient oral tradition that all humans used to be telepathic but as the generations have gone on we have lost this ability and so it only manifests in a few gifted individuals. The animals and nature however still retain this ability.
Bards also are expected to write poetry. This can be written or musical whatever you want and whereas this may seem like a benign pursuit and it is, it is also the way in which experience is captured and preserved for posterity. The ancient Druids did not have a language aside from ogham, which was more of a divinatory tool than an actual practical written language. Unfortunately, not much survives from those days.
There was the holy Isle of Avalon located on the Glastonbury Tor. Legend goes, it was hidden by the fairy magic, that it exists in a different dimension but simultaneously in the same space as the Tor, but only those who know the magic can access the island itself. The ancient stone circles were portals between this realm and that of the Fae, the Tuatha De Danaan, the people of Danu, who arrived in Ireland when their Homeland was destroyed and a great flood eerily close to the myth of Atlantis… These circles generated the original rip Van Winkle stories where unsuspecting victims fell asleep and awoke in the Fairy realm. Pleasant as it was, they would stay for a day or two and when they returned to this realm found that 100 years had gone by and they were only remembered in legends and all their family was dead.
The Fae, Sidhe, Tuatha De Danaan, whatever you want to call them. Figure prominently in the myths of my ancestors. So do will o the wisps unexplained balls of light known to haunt the forest who depending on your intentions are either salvation or destruction. I have seen these with my own two eyes in the Northwoods.
I could get deeper into Druid philosophy, but I will not suffice to say though this is the basic outline of what druidism is. It is the ancient precursor to modern-day Wicca, the calendar, the sabbats. It is deeply spiritually aligned with not only Nature, but serving humanity as well.
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