Vocational Druidry

 Recently a friend made a post on social media asking about what sort of title you would classify yourself in when it comes to being a magical practitioner.  A part of my response was that I view myself as a "vocational Druid" instead of a spiritual one.  While many of the people reading my post may have understood what I meant, I thought I would write this blog post to help educate those who may not know what I mean by it.

Let me begin by stating that ALL forms of Druidry are valid to those practicing them.  In fact, Sylvan Celtic Fellowship was originally envisioned to be a place where Druids from all walks could come together to learn from one another.  But it is particularly important to us that we state that, even though we as a group look at being a Druid a certain way, that does not mean we feel that other forms of Druidry are somehow wrong.

When looking at the history of the Druids from Celtic times to the modern day we can see marked differences in what it means to be a Druid in different eras.  Druid author, Isaac Bonewits broke it down into classifications of  "Paleo", "Meso", and "Neo" Druidisms...   The Paleo-druids being the original Druids that served the Celtic peoples as the scholarly elite of the tribes.  This class withing the social structure contained the knowledge and genealogies of the peoples who spoke the Celtic languages.  

The Meso-druids were those of the Celtic Romantic Revival period.  They patterned Druidry after romantic notions of the time, such as sun-worship.  Much of the Druidry that comes from this period was also crafted in the image of the Barddas by Iolo Morganwg, a known forger.  Much of this style of Druidry still exists in the modern world and is based in the idea of the Druids being a magical sect, similar to witches (and wizards) in popular imagination of modern society.  They hold to the Eight-spoked wheel of the year and are usually an initiatory tradition.

Then there are the Neo-druids, whose origins date back to the 1960s founding of the RDNA at Carlton college.  These organizations are more scholarship based, and hold to having religious ceremonies for their Druid congregants for the wheel of the year.  They may or may not be initiatory based.  Many of these organizations are based here in the United States.

 

Sylvan Celtic Fellowship tends to view Druids as a vocation instead of a spiritual or magical order.  We definitely feel that training and initiation are important to becoming a Druid, but to us, it  is not a spirituality or magical tradition on its own.  Like the Paleo-druids of old, we work for the people.  We carry the keys to our traditions, spiritual, magical, and societal.  We teach, we hold coming of age ceremonies, we actualize the wheel of the year, and we serve our people in the capacities of counselors.  So to us, we view being a Druid, as our jobs to the people we serve and our community.  We serve the people, the land, and the gods.

Domhnall Irvine 
Chancellor SCF