Spring begins today, Monday, 20 March 2023, officially at 21:24 UTC, though our weather may not reflect this. Thanks to global warming the weather here is increasingly unpredictable and while most of us are protected from its extremes, plants and wild life seem to be getting more and more confused.
Druids celebrate the occasion at noon, with The Druid Order doing so on Tower Hill, processing there this year from The Ship in Hart Street in white robes with their banners and performing a ritual celebration.
The Ancient Druids were a Celtic upper class we know relatively about as they kept no written records of their religious activities but there are some descriptions by Caesar and other Roman and Greek authors of their importance and their pagan practices, although some aspects of these may have been based on hearsay and propaganda.
Druidry was apparently an entirely oral tradition, with druids spending years of study and learning texts and rituals by heart; some of these may have been passed down through the years in folklore, particularly in Ireland, but much or all of this may well be later romantic invention.
According to Wikipedia Caesar “wrote that they were one of the two most important social groups in the region (alongside the equites, or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gallic, British, and Irish societies.”
Most of the ancient sources state that one aspect of their religious practices was human sacrifice, possibly of criminals “but when criminals were in short supply, innocents would be acceptable.”
One form that is said to have been used for this sacrifice was the “wicker man” where the victim was encased in a large wooden human effigy and was then burnt alive. But they are also said to have practised divination by stabbing a victim in the chest and observing the flow of blood and the convulsive movement of the limbs as the victim died.
Modern-day druid ceremonies are considerably tamer, with druids appearing as peaceful lovers of nature, which of course had much more obvious importance in ancient times – though we are now realising fairly desperately that our modern neglect or indifference to it is having disastrous consequences on biodiversity and future food supplies.
Some trees, in particular oak and hawthorn seem to have played a large role in the worship of ancient druids, and there are many groves of trees around the country believed by some to (sorry) have druidic roots. Certainly some of these ancient groves, whatever their origins seem to have a spiritual nature.
The Romans also wrote about the druids as philosophers, and Wikipedia has an quote from Caesar on this where he writes that they believed the human soul was indestructible, passing at death from one body to another. He also commented on their interest in astronomical matters – perhaps most obviously expressed at Stonehenge and other ancient monuments, as well as “on the extent and geographical distribution of the earth, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion.“
I’ve photographed the Druid Order ceremonies in several years on both the Spring Equinox at Tower Hill and the Autumn Equinox on Primrose Hill, a more dramatic setting. The pictures here come from 2008, but I’ve taken very similar ones in other years. Although inspired by earlier activities and mentioning some of those involved during their rituals, the actual form of their celebration is not ancient, but a little over a hundred years old.
More pictures from 2008: Druid Order – Spring Equinox.
