In Welsh Druidry, we believe in reincarnation, and the gradual journey of the soul from Annwn, through untold incarnations in our own world of Abred, until it has become sufficiently wise to leave material incarnation behind and progress to Gwynfyd, the existence of purely spiritual life:
Category: Abred
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Thoughts on Druidic belief and authority
I wrote this as a contribution to a discussion that’s ongoing in the members’ forums of the Druid Network. Those are private, so I thought I might post it here so that a broader audience can read it and contribute their thoughts.
I was recently reading a Substack article by Rod Dreher, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which led me to this piece by David Bentley Hart. Hart talks about a man called Reuben, who he met many years ago in Lancaster, England. I haven’t read anything by Hart before; Dreher, though devout in his Christian faith, has a mystic aspect to his faith which often overlaps the Druidic worldview. Hart has this to say of Reuben:
The Gorsedd of the Bards of the Island of Britain, in public procession with banners:
In contemporary Druidry, we often find a number of Welsh words being used. Examples are Awen, Nwyfre, and Eisteddfod. They aren’t always used correctly, or properly understood. I’m getting ready to start writing a new series of posts about Iolo Morganwg’s achievements, Iolo the Ovate (I’ve already written a series on Iolo the Bard, and will eventually move on to Iolo the Druid). Before I can, though, I want to cover the difference between Gorsedd and Eisteddfod.
The Post-Carbon Institute has been raising awareness of energy-related policy issues since 2003. This is a critical task: our current way of life, which is based on cheap and abundant energy, is inevitably going to have to change, and change soon – because energy supplies are becoming scarcer, and ever more expensive (PDF). This isn’t because we’re running out of oil: it’s because discovering and extracting oil is becoming so expensive that a price high enough to keep oil companies in business is a price that’s too high for consumers to afford. If the price goes down, the producers go bust; if the price goes up, the consumers go bust. That’s where we are now, and for evermore, because there are no new sources of cheap oil.
The folks behind the Balkan Celts blog recently posted a very, very interesting article: The Celtic Buddha.
The post discusses a stucco head discovered at an archaeological site in eastern Afghanistan. It represents a Celtic man, and is believed to have been sculpted from life – in other words, the artist knew a Celtic man who was on-site. In Afghanistan, possibly in the late Hellenistic age (when the area was conquered and settled by the armies of Alexander the Great), or possibly later, in the early Christian era.
The Cad Goddeu, in English The Battle of the Trees, is a prophetic poem amongst the works of Taliesin.
Prophecy in poetry is like divination with the I Ching: it does not have one definitive meaning and application. It is a reflection in the great Cauldron of Annwn: its obscure text and poetic imagery hold meaning, but that meaning only emerges when we interpret the poem’s symbolism in the context of our own time and our own situation.
The Cad Goddeu tells us of a war between the Great Families of Welsh myth.
The English word ‘Druid’ is derived from the Gallo-Brythonic word which has come down to modern Welsh as ‘Derwydd’. In turn, this is a compound word, drawing on ‘derw-‘, relating to the oak, and ‘-wydd’ (root word ‘Gwydd’), relating to ‘seer’ or ‘knowledge’.
An alternative word – ‘Gwŷdd’ – however, is also the Welsh word for a loom. This connection is worth exploring further.
In Barddas, Iolo Morganwg devotes a section to his theological views. There is quite a lot more on this theme in Barddas, but I think this excerpt covers the key points. Not all contemporary Druids believe this, but I do. I want to post Iolo’s words here to set the tone for a discussion of the soul’s journey, and of reincarnation, in Druidry as I understand it.
