I recently read a book about the Druids by Jean Markale, who was a prominent Celtic Historian. One of the many things I love about New Orleans is the large number of occult shops. I know that’s not everyone’s bag, but it is definitely mine. I found this book at one of my new favorite shops called Hex.

My impression of the Druids up to this point was a very superficial understanding that they were a pastoral, spiritual order among the Celts. I was drawn to the book mainly because I’ve been doing a deep dive in my ancestry. Cultures possibly relevant or adjacent to my lineage seem important to research, whether or not there is any direct link.

White-robed men with light skin, long white hair and beards is often how the Druids were depicted (like Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings”). While they allegedly had important knowledge in divination and plant medicine, what I did not know about was their obsession with killing and violence.

Julius Caesar wrote about his encounters with the Druids around 55 BCE. In fact, since they maintained a strictly oral tradition, there are no accounts of rituals or beliefs written down by the Druids themselves. The Roman conquest of Gaul, France proved successful at that time, wiping out most of the Druidic Celts there – but Caesar was unsuccessful in conquering the Druids of the British Isles. Emperor Claudius wiped out the Druids of Anglesey about 100 years later.

Thanks to Caesar, we know a handful of details about the Druids. The first was their tradition of human sacrifice. While Caesar described the Druids as primitive barbarians, his account of one of their ceremonial human sacrifices expressed a kind of awe.

The Druids built this elaborate giant man out of hemp; hollow in order to house those who were chosen for sacrifice. This happened around springtime. A fire was set below the hemp man and those inside were burned alive. These sacrificial victims were sometimes those suffering from leprosy or otherwise infirm, but not always.

I have seen the film “The Wicker Man” several times and always thought the premise was entirely fictional. Apparently not. In fact, Caesar’s account of this ceremony is what later inspired the giant floats that carry ceremonially dressed people in parades (first embraced by the Catholics for Carnival/ Mardi Gras).

The excavations of Druid sites in France and Britain have revealed the remains of hundreds of human bones gathered in specific areas, many with clear signs of death by sacrifice. Some of the sacrifices grew more extreme as the threat of Roman invasion loomed. They thought this would appease the gods and the Romans would retreat- taking it so far as to even cannibalize the victims and eat the marrow from their bones.

Cannibalism is what they did to their own people, mind you. What they did with the victims of invaders after murdering them was to hang their severed body parts from fences and wooden structures, displaying them like trophies. The accounts of barbarism weren’t embellished by Julius Caesar. The archeological evidence proves that the Druids were a violent bunch.

Since there really was no evidence of the Druids in Britain (or in France for that matter) before the 4th Century BCE, we cannot credit them with Stonehenge. Since you cannot carbon-date stone, it’s difficult to say when Stonehenge was built, but archaeologists have found evidence of Minoan human remains near the site dating around 2200 BCE. That’s 1800 years earlier.

Who knows who was living there prior to the Druids. They were no average humans, however. To lift the stones at Stonehenge, you had to be Hercules at the minimum.

Another shocking tidbit I learned from Markale is that The Holy Grail could possibly have been a Druidic reference to a severed human head. If this was related to imbibing blood, then we can see how this might have been construed as a drinking vessel. But it  makes the whole Grail legacy way more macabre.

Another interesting fact from Markale is that the Druids believed in only 3 elements, rather than 4. Like we see in the picture of the Triskelion above: there were only the 3 elements of Earth, Air and Water, continually spiraling in everlasting life. This is actually the original inspiration for the Trinity.

The Druids didn’t consider fire one of the elements. They considered it a tool in the transformation of the other three. Now, the Druids certainly didn’t invent this idea. The Egyptians discovered alchemy around 5000 BCE. Alchemy enlists the properties of fire to transform the elemental world in what we understand as the fundamentals of chemistry.

The Druids had emerged long after the Stone Age had discovered fire about 400,000 years ago (or possibly closer to 1.5 million years ago). The Bronze Age had surpassed them. They existed for a relatively short time in the Iron Age. So what really is so extraordinary about their legacy? Especially since we know so little about them?

The Celtic Cross was used by the Druids, often crossing two oak branches. The Babylonians, Peruvians, and a number of other ancient cultures used the cross as a symbol of the four directions -so it really is an ancient symbol. St. Patrick allegedly introduced the cross to Ireland about 1000 years later, but this isn’t really historically accurate. The Celts (Druids) were the first to use the cross in the British Isles (at least on record). The birth of Christianity simply altered the meaning behind the cross, associating it with Jesus and the Resurrection.

The more I research, the more I discover that symbols of great meaning often appear, disappear and then reappear throughout history, almost like a strange and confusing post-modern narrative. It’s a lifelong endeavor to unravel all of the knots.

The one piece of Druidic heritage that has persisted in modern culture is mistletoe. We think of it as a chance to kiss someone under an awning at the holidays (hopefully someone we actually want to kiss), but mistletoe was regarded as a sacred plant by the Druids. Modern research has discovered its anti-cancer properties.