THE SECRETS OF THE OLD DRUID OF THE MENAPIAN FOREST.

(or of the Forest of Arden as you like it.)

The old druid of whom we publish the pieces of advice (we could say the secrets), has claimed nothing but what the experience had made him recognize as being of a full accuracy , so we like to publish his writing whose translation sacrificed the elegance of the style to the simplicity of the expression and to the clearness of the sentences whose ambiguity could have become if not dangerous, at least very prejudicial to the interests of the readers.

Our publication will be therefore, we dare to hope it, received by all those who seek the truth and who are driven by the desire to be useful for the others, at the same time as they make a point of getting and of using all the means of joy that nature placed at man’s hand ......

The first part of our work is devoted to the health of our fellow human beings; the second will have as a motive their destiny.

We affirm the effectiveness .......... [they are the practical pieces of advice, HOWEVER, VERY QUESTIONABLE] .......... But we declare in all humility that most capricious of all the divinities of the paganism being the Fortune, it is necessary to join with much perspicacity, a remarkable promptness to seize her when she passes and to force her to be favorable for us. Union, as it is known, United we stand, divided we fall, so perseverance makes the success. Whatever happens do not let be discouraged, and remind of this proverb of an eternal application: All things come to him who wait.

Foreword of the editor. Made in Limbourg Belgium 1844.

EXTRACTS FROM RECEIVED OR SENT LETTERS.

(Titles and subtitles are from the editor .)

ON THE PARABLE OF THE DRUID AND OF THE PHILOSOPHER.

The great force of druidism is that it recognizes the portion of truth in every religion. This eagerness to collect the truth, whatever the sources of which it comes, is one of its characteristics; and that explains the facility with which certain influences external to its cultural background of origin could be accommodated (writing, sculpture, temples, etc.).

As regards druidism in every case there is not between philosophy and religion the difference we are accustomed to make between these two fields. What we call (improperly) druidic philosophy is only a set of different views or approaches of the same suprasensible reality, which have all as an aim on different levels, the access to the next world. From free speculations of independent philosophers in the beginning they became soteriologies, but remained in the direct line of the polytheism (shirk akhbar of kuffar our Muslim brothers would say).

“Our Heracles is known among the Celts of the Continent under the local name of Ogmius; and the appearance he presents in their pictures is truly grotesque. You would take him for some infernal deity, for Charon or Iapetus—anyone rather than Heracles. ….For a long time I stood staring at this in amazement, I knew not what to make of it, and was beginning to feel somewhat nettled, when I was addressed in admirable Greek by a Celt who stood at my side, and who besides possessing a scholarly acquaintance with their national science, proved to be not unfamiliar with our own. He told me, Noble stranger, I see this fresco puzzles you: let me solve the riddle. We uns Celts connect eloquence [editor’s note: Celtic Labaron] not with Hermes, as you do, but with the mightier Heracles.

Nor need it surprise you to see him represented as an old man. It is the prerogative of eloquence that it reaches perfection in old age; at least if we may believe your poets, who tell us that…”Youth has a wandering wit

whereas old age has wiser words to say than youth.” Thus we find that from Nestor's lips honey is distilled; and that the words of the Trojan counselors are compared to the lily, which, if I have not forgotten my Greek, is the name of a flower. Hence, if you will consider the relation that exists between tongue and ear, you will find nothing more natural than the way in which our Heracles, who is eloquence personified, draws men along with their ears tied to his tongue. Nor is any slight intended by the hole bored through that member because I recollect verses in one of your comic poets in which we are told that…”There is a hole in every glib tongue's tip.”

Indeed, we refer the achievements of the original Heracles, from first to last, to his wisdom and persuasive eloquence. His shafts, as I take it, are no other than his words: swift, keen-pointed, true-aimed to do deadly execution on the soul. And, in conclusion, he reminded me of our own phrase: 'winged words…..' (Lucian of Samosata. Introductory lecture, Hercules, 1-7).

To designate his interlocutor Lucian uses the word philosophos. Philosophos is used in the sentence only as an adjective; but as substantive it is the word used by the Greek writers to designate generally the druids.

It is important to notice the presence in this country, which was considered as barbarian and uncultivated, of personalities able to discuss on an equal footing and in his language with Lucian of Samosata.

Nothing says that this scholar able at the same time to quote Greek verses to carry out a brilliant compared mythology between Ogmius and Hercules was a druid but the presumption is rather strong. Lastly, it should be noted that if the Celt outclasses the Greek, it does not benefit from that to try to convert him, and it is perhaps there the most important teaching of this text.

We do not have the certainty the Greek understood and repeated everything well , but old accounts are too rare so that we can neglect one of them. It could be that this druid, because it was, of course, a druid, nuanced his interpretation in order to calm the irritation of his interlocutor. However, the form of the explanation, which betrays a certain subtlety of intelligence, was at the very least to come from a good expert in theology.

Another example. Among certain Buddhists the concept of nirvana for example evolved to the belief in Amida Buddha, thanks to the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin and Shinran in Japan. Among these believers, it is taught that the soul, after being gone though death, can choose to profit from a stay in the Heaven before entering the Nirvana, ultimate state of existence. It is proclaimed that this second salvation chance is gotten by the faith in the divine mercy as in the powers of Amida, God or Demiurge

of the Heaven. As regards philosophy, Amidists think there is an Infinite Reality located beyond every finite human comprehension. As regards religion, they agree with the faith in Amida, the infinitely merciful one, who loves mankind to such a point that he does not suffer that one mortal, calling upon his name with a sincere faith; can fail in his getting happiness through a rise to Heaven. However we would believe to hear some high-knowers. (We uns Celts we represent… we think… No slight is intended …)

In short: acceptance of the differences and of the national points of view, and even exchange and dialog through an opening towards the other cultures.

FIFTH LETTER OF THE DRUID AREMI.

Mass religions, namely Jews, Christians, and Muslims, work on the principle that true religion (theirs) that of Abraham, of Isaac, Jacob, and of Muhammad, was indeed revealed to the first men; and that all the rest (all the other ideas of the divinity) is due to degeneration, lapses of memory, or treason. It is, of course, an untruth endowed with serious consequences (intolerance, incomprehension, religious racism and so on).

Druidism of today must not pollute the history of beliefs using the current interpretative solutions. All the difficulty of the historian of mentalities precisely consists on the contrary, in restoring to past experience its own contextualized definitions.

The religion is defined, according to E.B. Tylor, by the belief in spiritual beings. The man comes up to the idea of a principle different from his body, i.e., to the idea of soul or spirit, following two psychophysiological experiments with obvious numinous nature. On the one hand, phenomena of sleep, disease, ecstasy (trance) and death; on the other hand, the personal experiment of the dreams and aislingi (visions).

N.B. Others would speak about illumination… realization… vision… or awakening. Numinous is also a word used by Jung, in order to designate the at the same time attractive and terrifying experiment which is in the beginning of every spiritual or mystical future …

When this principle gives up temporarily its body, the man falls asleep, the soul/mind wanders, and has its own experiments, the dreams. When the soul/mind is separated from the body, it is death. The ecstasy and the disease are also explained by a temporary desertion from the body, by the soul/mind. And, since people dream about persons deceased for a long time, they concluded from it that the soul survives after death.

According to Tylor, this belief in the post-existence or survival of the soul/mind, gave rise to the worship of the dead and of the ancestors. It is certain indeed that, in the Celtic world, everything occurs as if a certain number of god-or-demons, even of goddess-or-demonesses, fairies if it is preferred, were in the beginning only some simple ancestors, towards the souls or minds of whom a worship was performed.

The fact that a Viereckschanz was built just beside a Hallstatt burial mound in Hohmichele, in South Germany, proves it. A sacrificed wife, shares even inside it the burial of her husband.

Soul/minds of the dead and god-or-demons were combined in the druidic beliefs from time immemorial.

N.B. The Viereckschanzen (four cornered enclosures) are quadrangular sanctuaries, delimited by one or more ditches or a levee; used by the Celts between the 4th and the 1st century before our era, from Bohemia and Moravia to the center of France. The interior installations, complex, seem to obey no rule. Only the smallest ones (approximately 60 m long) contain vestiges of construction in their central surface reserved for the ceremonies. Pertaining to worship pits are sometimes dug there. These structures with an enclosure are the proto-historic equivalent of the “theaters” which were used, according to Posidonius, as a framework, for the Celtic feasts; they were perhaps previous, in their function, these Romano-British or Gallo-Roman buildings dedicated to the Community meetings and/or to the accomplishment of the worship.

See also in Ireland Newgrange (the Brug na Boinne) and the other similar cases of megalithic monuments with funerary nature.

The autonomous existence of the soul leads to the idea of independent spirits, who animate Nature, but who are likely to possess men; thus is explained the phenomenon of the “possession”; or of the embodiment in an object; it is there the origin of the animism or “fetishism” (Tylor explained fetishism by the belief in a soul/mind being incorporated in an unspecified object).

By analogy, the primitive ones would have concluded from that animals and plants, and even the apparently inanimate objects, also have a body and a soul. Because there is no difference of nature between the man and the animated or inanimate being which surround him. All are immersed in the same divine flood.

These god-or-demons, or soul/minds, has a capacity of unlimited dividing as well as the possibility of doing repeated travels: they live in different places. We could say that they achieve a kind of cell division and of self-reproduction. While remaining particularly zones like the forest or the trees, i.e., while being present in certain places, they hide in the background of nature. Before to be endowed

with individual names, they were conceived as being simply the soul/minds present in such or such place, but remaining in the depths of the forest, even of a hill, etc. These god-or-demons have not yet an individual own nature therefore hid in undefined places, locked up in the anonymity of nature. The distinctive characteristic of the god-or-demons to stress here is their faculty of unlimited dividing as their mobility: they cross the air instantaneously to settle their residence in different places. This phenomenon could be compared with a “taking up.” A word which normally refers, of course, to the entry of a god-or-demon even of a soul/mind in a person.

Animism, worship of the vital force embodied in all the beings endowed with strength or motion (living beings, rain, wind, water, spring and seas for example), combined with the worship of the ancestors; is the first religion communal to all Mankind. It is found still nowadays besides, as well in the Brazilian forest, as in the Australian desert or the African bush.

Starting from this animist pool, shared during 400.000 years by the whole mankind, were released two relatively recent tendencies (they date back only to a few thousands of years).

For the one, the polytheism, the natural forces were so many and mysterious that it was necessary, to better identify them, to give them human characteristics, that they would exceed by properly divine attributes. In other words, personal and anthropomorphic god-or-demons.

The notion of relative, antithetic and complementary, dualism, everywhere present in nature (see the chapter about the eons , Neto/Neith/Neth, the ago, and the oxymoron, for example) was used as a basis for the justification of the existence of positive or harmful, even ambivalent, deities. This notion of antithetic and complementary, polarity thus justifies basically the existence of these many divinities (male or female, constructing or destroying…), but the druidic reflection has, in certain cases, introduced a third element into these force couples).

The science and its value system did not exist, natural phenomena (storms, rainbow…) therefore found explanations only in magic-religious theories. On this level, theology becomes mixed up consequently with science. The prehistoric Man has no other civilization or conceptual means to explain the world which surrounds him. He therefore designed anthropomorphic god-or-demons of fire, winds, water, sea, and so on, what prevented nobody from honoring them in the particular shape that they take for him. As a wind more favorable than another, such spring, such forest…

It is so therefore that became consistent the worship of Nature which characterizes our ancestors, with its particular forms: worship of rivers, trees, animals… Later, people deified no longer an individual being, but the whole: and they came to therefore from there to design a divinity of rivers, another of forest, mountains… It was the beginning of the polytheism in the nations of Antiquity with their god-or-demons of the sky, atmosphere, wind, water…

This type of reaction in front of the little worrying mysteries of nature and in front of the forces which break out there, well natural at the time (let us not scorn our distant ancestors whose science was only embryonic); is illustrated perfectly by the myth of the wild or cursed hunt, allocated to King Arthur, or to many other great lords of this type, Herlechinus for example, even to nobody in particular. The origin of it is clear.

Popular belief allocates the crash and the damage of certain nights, mainly during the changes in seasons, whereas whole nature is upset by wind and rain or violent storms; to a troop of fantastic soul/minds, on horseback, accompanied by noisy hounds. (Editor’s note. The idea of expiation of a fault does not exist, of course, at the origin in this phenomenon and was introduced by Christianity).

This hunt, which, according to the countries and the provinces, has various names, represents perhaps initially the winter making room for summer. But the pagan myth was changed by Christianity.

With Christianity indeed, the tradition of the wild hunt is transformed. It is, first of all, linked to certain biblical characters (Cain’s hunt, Holofernes’ hunt, Herod’s hunt); later it is identified with historical characters such as Hans von Hackelnberg, who, although living in the 16th century, became, in Saxony and Westphalia, under a slightly changed name, the very type of the cursed hunter; finally, it loses every personal characteristic to be called , Wild Hunt, Phantom Hunt.

It is at the end of the 11th century, in Normandy, that we meet for the first time an allusion to this cursed hunt, in a famous passage of Orderic Vitalis.

During the night of December 31 to January 1, 1092, the priest of Bonneval (Walchelin, in the diocese of Bayeux) was returning home after visiting the sick when he suddenly heard a terrifying fracas and saw a flying army coming towards him. He tried to conceal himself near four medlar trees when a man of imposing size armed with a club forced the unfortunate priest to stand at his side. An entire wild army filed past the eyes of the terrified priest. First come the infantrymen, carrying the fruits of their pillage. Then followed the grave diggers, carrying fifty coffins. The giant with the club accompanied them. Women on horseback followed, blaspheming and confessing their crimes; then came clerics, abbots,and bishops pleading with the priest to pray for them. And then again still more victims. The priest quickly grasped that this was the “Hellequin’s hunt” (the household of Hellequin) in which he had never wanted to believe (…) The priest tried to step into the procession and stop one of the horses, but he burned his hand when he touched the harness.

Let us underline once again that the idea of an expiation of big sins, introduced here by Christianity, does not, of course, exist initially.

It is that the myth tends already indeed, towards being changed. By leaving the popular field to enter the literary field, while moving away from the oral traditions of the countryside to fix itself in the books of the intellectuals, the legend is reduced.

It is no longer accompanied by the great noises of nature, the neigh of horses, the barking of dogs, that the poets represent us the Hellequin’s hunt (the household of Hellequin).We are there already closer to the Harlequin of comedies.

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Another line of development produced the deities linked to the various phases and functions of the human life: deities of birth, marriage, death, agriculture, war, or others. The function of these god-or-demons is to protect a human action, when they did not become pure concepts, i.e., symbols; because, in the Antiquity, let us not forget it, the divine forces, the numina, preexisted to any personalization, and guaranteed the good progress of the various moments of the life of the human being, by taking their name from the action thus sponsored.

In the beginning, the god-or-demons of the druidic mythology therefore did not appear in a really precise shape. In the beginning, let us repeat it, the deities of druidism did not have a physical and individual character, marked well, they were not represented in the form of painting or of sculpture, and behaving like human beings. The druidic polytheism , in its germinal stage, had this characteristic: the god-or-demons were cloaked in invisibility (feth fiada) which hid their characteristic of bodily and individual existence. However an invisibility polytheism, by contrast with that of which the demons are visible, has a system of believing having its own logic and its distinct methods.

The mode of existence of these god-or-demons and their functioning are different in a significant way according to whether they can be seen or not. The visible god-or-demons and the invisible god-or-demons can, of course, be all taken into account inside the framework of the polytheism, but they differ according to the way in accordance with which they appear and work in this world.

The polytheism of the second phase of the druidic thought consists in believing in god-or-demons visible in the eyes of mankind.

Above the disembodied souls or the manes of the dead, local genies of rocks, springs and trees, above the crowd of the good and bad god-or-demons, and the rest of the ordinary soul/minds; therefore stand more powerful deities, whose influence is limited to local or individual interests, and who act directly in their vast field; or can work through beings lower than their species: their servants, agents or mediators.

The god-or-demons of the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman people thereafter were largely represented in paintings or sculptures. Like human beings therefore, they have a physical body, act, and have individual own characteristics. The features of their face, their physical body and their typical actions, are clearly described in their form and in their contents. Their bodies bear the marks of their age. Ogmius for example, is an old man, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus a young person, and Brangaine a woman.

We have opposed or more exactly distinguished two systems of polytheism, by using the word “invisible god-or-demons” and “visible god-or-demons”; but let us not forget, however, that the key which opens the secrecy of their contrasted natures is naturally in the distinctiveness of all these god-or-demons.

In the third time, the Man subjected these forces of nature to a higher intelligence which, although by difficult to follow ways and detours, makes the best of all things, i.e., for our good. The names vary according to the cultural levels civilizations : Fate, Divine Providence, Poetic justice . From this point of view, faith and hope are the logical compensation of the distress of Mankind facing nature, fate (death) and society (which inflicts such an amount of repression and suffering). Hope and Faith are the consequence of the desire that there is somewhere a mother, at the same time threatening and protective, but whose protective role is put at the foreground for obvious reasons. This mother, wise, just, good, fills her child, glorifies his life beyond death and rewards him for all the good he did.

Some authors, such Marija Gimbutas, think that the worship of such a Goddess-or-Demoness, or fairy, appears in the lower Paleolithic. According to this assumption, the first traces of such a primordial religion would date back to 35.000 before our era, with in particular vestiges such as the Venus of Willendorf.

The worship or the veneration of goddess-or-demonesses or fairies instead of god-or-demons, refers to the primitive worship of fertility, such as it seems to be universally celebrated to the end of prehistory. This worship, in which the woman figure held a large place and took on a sacred dimension, consisted especially of a veneration of the universal female principle.

This system was not based on a sexist discrimination profiting especially to women, but on the importance attached to the feminine, the woman incarnating the reproduction of the species and its hope of immortality; in a temporal dimension which was not linear as it became it with the patriarchate, but circular and cyclic, from where the myth of “the eternal return.”

The existence of such a social system during prehistory is no longer hardly questioned today, even if ethnologists, archeologists and anthropologists, don’t always agree on its definition. What is more problematic today is of knowing why and how patriarchate was substituted there, to impose itself with the invention of agriculture, between - 5000 and - 3000.

This basic and even pre-druidic, druidic concept, survived a long time within the common people in spite of the Romanization and of the world cultural colonialism which resulted from it. A cultural colonialism based, on the one hand, on an incredible contempt of the right to be different on behalf of the elites or more exactly of the social hierarchies; and, on the other hand, on a not less big servility on behalf of many persons, with regard to the power of money; completely similar to the situation which the Englishmen as well as the Frenchmen imposed on their colonies in the 19thcentury. The servility of certain men and certain women with regard to the dominant material or economic powers will never cease to be astonishing; so there was no lack in public figures having accepted at the time, in Celtic land, to sell their soul and the soul of their country or of their civilization , in exchange of some crumbs of power or of a few gold coins.

Cf. the case of the Gaul who made the triumphal arch built in Saintes, a named Caius Julius Rufus.

In spite of this cultural globalism, literally unprecedented , made possible by the total lack of pride, of dignity, or honor of many nationals of the time; the worship of the fairies of the type matres nessamae (some family guardian angels) or of the matres suleviae ( personal or individual guardian angels) nevertheless survived, as the many terra cotta figurines discovered here or there show it.

They were sometimes compared with Venus or Minerva, more rarely with Juno, Diana, Ceres or Cybele, but they do not resemble the corresponding classical mothers- goddess-or-demonesses.

The Mother-goddesses-or demonesses are therefore called, after the Roman conquest, Matrae, Matres or Matronae; more still than Epona, they are the goddess-or-demonesses, or the fairies if one prefers, of plenty, wealth, family, clan, tribe. Often combined with healing or not, springs and wells.

As we have had the opportunity to emphasize it, the god-or-demons (and the goddess-or-demonesses or fairies) of the druidism, are often described as contrebis (who live among us who live with us, a little like a neighbor).

Archeologists discovered in the hill fort of Argentomagus, many figurines making it possible to note that at the Roman time, many Celts of then, but not of the “intellectual” circles; (the quotation marks

are needed, because the intellectual is often the one who does not see further the tip of his nose, who sees nothing of the great evolutions in progress for years before his eyes, or discovers them only forty years after they began to be set up); that many Celts therefore, belonging by no means to the socio-economic hierarchy (what is often the same thing) still kept a faith deeply rooted as well as strong ties towards the ancestral deities.

These fairies of the matres type are therefore of two types, either out of stone, sitting in an armchair and holding a horn of plenty full of fruits (goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, of fruitfulness); or out of terra cotta, sitting in an armchair of wicker, nursing their babies on their bosom (goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, nourishing, guardian of children, in short, mopates). These figurines of white terra cotta mothers-goddess-or-demonesses are found everywhere and show the importance attached, by the high-knowers of the druidiaction, to the feeding mother like as to motherhood. Archeologists also found in the excavations of Argentomagus innumerable white terra cotta statuettes representing a mopatis virgin, known as Venus in the Roman interpretation, protecting with his cloak five differently year-old children, what therefore shows the popularity of this goddess-or-demoness or of this fairy in the families.

These clay figurines testify to the ideas or views of the divinity still largely widespread at the time, and therefore to the genuine druidic faith; free from any influence, on the content, of the dominating in the world at the time (Roman Empire) conformism.

In the Europe of the Middle Ages, this worship of the sacred femininity continued in the shape of the black Madonnas or in the form of various Saint women as those who were venerated in the cathedral of Worms in Germany (the three Bethen); whose iconography is identical to that of the fairies of the matronae type in the time of the Roman Empire, previous to them.

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The druidic polytheism is a system of powers classification. It is governed by the concern for the comprehension of the human destiny, by the religious feeling and the need for the salvation (disjunction compared to the innate condition of mankind). The symbolic system which is associated with polytheism overlaps with the socio-political system.

The druidic polytheism delimits the terminals of the royal power and of the human competences: its role is to keep the balance of power being able to exist between god-or-demons and mankind. The polytheist system structures the social relationship : its role is to connect the symbolic principles with mankind. It also gives an ideological dimension to the natural elements, the History and the role of mankind (limited de facto in the beginning to the Celtic people, but there will be then Celtization of many other tribes). Each tribe-State therefore becomes a microcosm (each Panth-eon or pleroma varies from a city to another, mainly in the hierarchical system), subjected to the Bitus (to the Cosmos). The deities are defined as being timeless and spiritual, but their visible (“real”) presence is expressed by representations (arcana or simulacra, therefore not necessarily statues) and by a name.

The (Latin) simulacra or (Sanskrit) arcane, represent the essence of the deity, it is in them and by them that the deity exists virtually.

The poly-unity structures the social relationship with the symbolic dimension we have said.

Among many peoples, we can still realize that, man being the prototype of the deity, because it is obvious that it is the Man who made God or the Demiurge in his image, and not the reverse, which has no sense; the human society and its government became the model on which were formed the divine society as well as the divine government. What are the chiefs and the kings among men, matches what are the great god-or-demons among the souls/minds of lower rank.

Each mythology is also, basically, a classification, but which borrows its principles from religious beliefs, and not from scientific concepts.

The well-organized panth-eons or pleromas share the nature, just like the clans share the land.

To attribute such or such natural phenomena to a god-or-demon, amounts grouping them under the same genetic heading, to arrange them in the same class; and the genealogies, the identifications admitted between the deities; involve coordination or subordination relationship between the categories of elements these deities represent.

Each God-or-demon has his doubles who are other forms of himself, while having other functions, by the way, various powers; and the elements on which these powers are practiced are attached to a central or dominating notion ; like the species to the genus, or a secondary variety to the principal species.

These classifications are even so essential elements of the mythologies that they played an important role in the evolution of the religious thought

The small local, particular, god-or-demons, line up little by little under more general chiefs, the great god-or-demons of nature, and tend to be merged in them. Initially, the notion of what the first ones have special, persists; the name of the former god-or-demon coexists with that of the great god-or-demon, but only as an attribute of the latter; then its existence becomes increasingly ghostly until the day when the great gods remain alone, if not in the worship, at least in mythology. One could almost say that mythological classifications, when they are complete and systematic, when they embrace the universe, announce the end of the mythologies themselves.

Through that we imperceptibly approach the abstract or relatively rational types which are at the top of the first philosophical classifications.

It was very often said that Man began by representing the things by referring them to himself. What is previous makes it possible to better specify in what this anthropocentrism, or more exactly social centrism consists. Because the core of the first systems of nature, it is not the individual; it is the society. It is itself which objectifies itself, and neither the isolated man.

The tendency to the hierarchical classification leads to the invention of a god of the gods who was to be more powerful and stripped from the specific attributes of the others, that people also endeavored to better define.

The Fate or Tokade (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, destiny, toicthech “fortunatus,” tonquedec in Breton language). The labarum is its messenger or its sign. We recognize there the polytheism of the Aryan cultures, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Latin, Indian, or another.

From where finally the belief in a higher impersonal force, but which can, through its taboos, of its gessa, or its hypostases, kind Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Lug, Ogmius, the cosmic great mother goddess-or-demoness, and so on, be felt personally.

This part of the work of Tylor was not discussed. Criticisms relate on his definition of the animism as a first expression of the religious experiment, and on his linear reconstruction of the evolution of the religion; this one beginning with animism, continuing with fetishism, then naturism (or worship of nature) and polytheism.

The general explanation of Tylor was criticized especially for two of his conclusions, of great theoretical consequence.

1. Animism at the origin of religion.

2. The assertion according to which, everywhere in the world, the religion evolved in the direction we have just indicated (animism fetishism polytheism monotheism).

Many authors rejected the first assertion. Andrew Lang, for example, showed that the idea of a personal higher being is also attested at the most antiquated populations, where animism plays only a secondary role. By following a completely different way, R.R. Marret supported, in an article remained famous, that the first form of religious experiment would have been caused by the meeting with the mysterious and impersonal force, that Melanesians call mana. From his part, J.G. Frazer estimated that the magic had been previous the appearance of religion. Lastly, Emile Durkheim saw in totemism the source of any religious experiment.

Totemism is a combination of social and religious observances. Originally, men believed to guarantee stocks of food by respecting the animal totem which they supposed to be the biological descendants. The totems were at the same time the symbols of the groups and their god-or-demon. This god-or-demon was the personified clan.

Totemism was a phase of the various attempts intended to make social a religion which, in the beginning, was especially personal. The concept of totem evolved to become the flag, or the national symbol of the various modern people (l’etoile du Nord, the star of David, the crescent moon…).

It is admitted today that the research of the “origins” of the religion is vain and without hope, since we have no possibility of reconstituting the beliefs and the ideas of the first men. Insofar as they do nothing but substitute the animism another “origin” of the religion, the new theories like that of the primitive monotheism revealed to men by God himself, do not have more weight than that of Tylor.

These criticisms had the virtue nevertheless to point out other original religious phenomena, existing beside animism or previous to it.

Indeed, it was not possible to find a religion which is exclusively animist. Beside the belief in soul/minds and the conviction that Nature is animated, there exists, at the early people , other religious conceptions; for example, the belief in a creator higher being, or the belief in the mana… Moreover, the animism is not known everywhere in the world, as Tylor implied it .

The animist beliefs are dominant admittedly in Melanesia, in Indonesia, on the Western coast of Africa, in the two Americas. However, even in these areas, all the objects are not likely to have a “soul/mind.” For the Indonesian populations, for example, the inanimate objects have no soul, and only certain plant species are considered as having a soul.

However, the most serious objections against the intellectual reconstruction of Tylor, relate to his explanation of the origin of the god-or-demons. According his theory, the notion of god-or-demon could not have taken shape before the primitive Mankind comes to the idea of soul (or of spirit). However, certain populations, which are among most antiquated, for example the tribes of south-Eastern Australia, know nevertheless higher beings and other divine or semi-divine figures, who are not regarded as “soul/minds.” These supernatural beings are designed as real persons, although considerably higher than the human beings. Moreover, always according to Tylor, the model o the higher being would have been the tribe chief ; however we find the belief in higher beings in societies which don’t have chiefs.

According to Tylor and his evolution theory of the religions, belief in the souls/minds of Nature and worship of the ancestors must be previous to the polytheism and therefore to the formation of the monotheism. However, at the Australian Aboriginals as in other archaic populations of the same cultural level, where this belief in higher beings was observed, there exists neither worship of Nature nor worship of ancestors. It is not necessary besides to make the worship of the forces of Nature coming from the animist beliefs. It is possible to imagine such worship as resulting from the personification of certain aspects of Nature.

Another difficulty comes from the fact that the early people believe in the existence of several souls. To start with the Greeks who distinguish in the psyche: threptikon, aisthetikon, dianoetikon, auxetikon, orektikon and kinetikon. Specialists distinguish especially between what the researchers called the breath soul (or life soul), which leaves the body only with death; and the soul/mind (or shadow, image, double…) which is likely to give up the body during sleep, disease or trance. But, we saw it, certain peoples consider that there exists up to seven and even thirteen souls, dependent on specific parts of the body or on particular physiological functions.

Similar ideas exist in certain tribes of North America, as A. Hultkrantz showed it: the pure soul has its ultimate origin in the divinity, by creation or emanation; this pure soul preexists man, is embodied and, after death, comes back into its supernatural source. However, if the soul, or, more precisely, the purest soul, is regarded as created by God or the Demiurge, the theory of Tylor appears indefensible.

The giving up of animism in this case (to explain the origin of the religions) was justified mainly by the pejorative aspects of the connotations of such a concept, related to unverifiable evolutionary reconstructions; and according to which religions of Mankind would pass all by three stages: animism, polytheism and monotheism.

The concept of animism then seemed as inconsistent and ambiguous as, for example, that of “primitive,” which accompanied it. The British anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard highlighted the weaknesses, the paradoxes, or the dead ends, of the theory of Tylor. Nothing , never, was able to prove that the “soul/minds” with whom the “primitive one” would fill nature, are due to psychic phenomena (dreams, aislingi, visions), nor that the “spirit” is a concept derived from that of “soul.” This last assumption lost besides every credibility because of the extreme difficulties we encounter when we want to translate some notions such as “soul,” “spirit,” “vital force,” “God”; and because of the subsequent impossibility to integrate them in a same class of phenomena, while resorting to this developed in the West concept.

Tylor therefore could explain the apparently strange, perceptible in the traditional societies, designs, only by impoverished concepts concerning the psychology of the time, while, in parallel, those of

evolutionism imposed themselves. Thus a “childish mentality” was attributed to the individuals being members of unscientific animist civilizations.

However, the views of Tylor cannot be all held for absurdities, nor even for simple curiosities in the history of ideas. They keep a real interest, which depends less on the reasons called upon by Mircea Eliade than on the fact that Tylor was the promoter of a theory of the rationality of the “alternative” civilizations, and of the “different” beliefs, measured in terms of the scientific reason. Taking into account the available at the time data, the theory of animism answered in an adequate way the questions raised by these beliefs, at first sight irrational, in nonhuman entities (ancestors, souls, spirits, pertaining to worship powers such as therapeutic fetishes, ordeal elements, and so on); beliefs specific to societies besides perfectly ready to exploit technically their natural environment. With his design of the animism, Tylor wanted only to show the rationality of the “primitive religions,” rationality based on observations and logical deductions, even if those appear erroneous acknowledging the current scientific reason.

Contemporary anthropology continues nevertheless to wonder about the nature of “religion” and “magic,” the debate being far from being closed.

For certain authors, at the base and at the origin of every religion, there is a manifestation of the Divinity (hierophany) experimented by man, or a manifestation of God or of the Demiurge (theophany).

Finally, as Mircea Eliade underlined it , the whole history of the religions, from most primitive to most elaborate, consists in an accumulation of hierophanies or theophanies. From the manifestation of the sacredness in an unspecified object (stone, tree) to the manifestation of God or of the Demiurge in a person: for example Krishna (for Hinduism) Jesus (for Christianity).

At the origin of Judaism are besides also several theophanies.

- Genesis 18: Abraham near the oak of Mamre (three men, in fact, three angels, appear to him).

- Exodus 3,1: Moses and the burning bush.

- Exodus 19-20: Moses in the Sinai.

At the origin of Islam is the appearance of a mysterious entity (thereafter equated with the archangel Gabriel) to Muhammad , in 610, a supernatural entity who, according to Muslim tradition, brought to him a teaching, the Quran.

We can therefore see according to these few examples that there is no direct theophany, a theophany needing always a means of expression. We also see the diversity of the supports of the aforementioned theophany.

- A person (Krishna or Jesus).

- An angel or a revelation (Quran).

- A tree (for example a burning bush).

- A cloud (God or the Demiurge speaks in a cloud, by the means of thunder, in Exodus 19-20; a little like our Taran/Toran/Tuireann to us).

- A stone (in all kinds of religions, including Islam, cf. the Kaaba)…

We also see the problem raised by all these theophanies. The object or the person support of the theophany, in which or in whom the sacredness or God or of the Devil is manifested, remains a being like the others.

Such stone which is the veneration object in such religion is apparently a stone like the others (same chemical composition). However, for the believer, it is a basically different stone, a sacred stone, i.e., which expresses or reveals another dimension of existence.

“Ar baí cretim in óen Dé oc Cormac . ar ro ráidseom na aidérad clocha ná crunnu acht no adérad intí dosroni & ropo chomsid ar cul na uli dúla” (Senchas na relec inso).

“Cormac believed in one god. He said that he adored neither the stones nor the trees, but he adored only the one who had made them and who is the guardian of all the elements” (The history of burial places).

Another example the black stone of the Kaaba in Islam.

The angel or archangel Gabriel often appeared to Muhammad in the shape of a young man 1), and the Quran is apparently, at first sight, a book like the others. However, for Muslims, it reveals a supernatural reality (God or the Demiurge). In the same way, Jesus (Yehoshua bar Yosef) was apparently a man like the others; however for the Christians, he is sons of God or of the Demiurge.

To notice: it is never the stone, the tree, and so on, which people worship, but the deity, the power which one day manifested itself in this stone. In every hierophany therefore, it is appropriate to recognize three elements.

- The natural object (stone, tree…) who continues to be located in its normal context.

- The invisible reality which gives another nature to the object, support of theophany.

- The mediator which is the natural object covered with the new dimensions of the sacredness.

1) This point of view is very disputed. Specialists point out that the name of Gabriel appears only seldom and tardily in the Quran, and therefore that the creature which appeared initially to Muhammad remains in reality to be determined (a jinn?)

THIRD LETTER OF THE OLD DRUID OF THE ARDEN FOREST.

……………..Let us specify, first of all, that it goes without saying that influences considered as beneficial in a part of the world can be looked as evil elsewhere. The east wind is a god in South America, because it brings the rain; in India, it is a demon because it brings dust and causes dryness.

Druidism has an obvious “naturalist” component if we understand with this word that mankind venerates, through elements of nature (earth, sun, sky, moon, lightning, water, fire, rocks, trees), the power which appears in them. Without being God or the Demiurge, these elements seem as symbols and direct demonstrations of the divine power in the raw.

“Ar baí cretim in óen Dé oc Cormac . ar ro ráidseom na aidérad clocha ná crunnu acht no adérad intí dosroni & ropo chomsid ar cul na uli dúla” (Senchas na relec inso).

Symbolism should not be mixed up with the idolatry where the material object is directly adored for itself and as such.

Mankind thus “adored” earth , air, water and fire. The primitive tribes venerated the springs and adored the rivers.

It was easy for the ancient people to imagine that soul/minds lived the bubbling springs, the spouting out wells, the fast rivers and the impetuous torrents. Moving water highly impressed these beings remained very close to nature by making believe in their animating by soul/minds and supernatural powers.

Even at the time of Moses, the belief in the soul/minds of nature was strong enough to carry out their perpetuation in Hebraic theology in the form of fire, water and air angels. And let us not speak about the case of the pool of Bethesda in the New testament (John chapter V, 1-16), directly combined with an “angel.”

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a large number of disabled people used to lie: the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. And they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time, an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

Clouds, rain, hail, all were feared and adored by many tribes and in the initial worships of nature. The storm winds with their thunder and their flashes terrified the men of this time. They were impressed so much by these disordered states of the elements that they regarded the thunder as the voice of a wrathful god-or-demon. The fire worship and the lightning fear were linked in the majority of the cases and extremely widespread in many human groups.

The respect for fire peaked in Persia, where it remained for a long time. Some tribes worshipped fire by taking it for the deity itself; others, like druids, revered it as a psychopompous vehicle or a purifier mean. On the druids fire masters cf. the excellent book by Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h on the subject. Fire was the psychopompous vehicle of Taran/Toran/Tuireann but the Bel fire itself was beneficial.

Virgins were responsible for taking care of the sacred fire (see the perpetual fire worship combined with St. Brigit) and, at our time, people make still candles burning in the ritual of much of religious services.

The veneration of the moon peaked in the reign of the hunters gatherers , while the worship of the sun became the principal religious ceremony of the subsequent agricultural ages.

At one time or another, all that is on the surface of the earth was an object of worship for Man, including himself. He also adored all that we can imagine in the sky and under the surface of the ground. The primitive men feared all the demonstrations of power; they paid homage to all the natural phenomena they could not understand. The observation of powerful material forces such as earthquakes, storms, floods, crumblings, volcanos, fire, heat and cold, largely impressed the expanding mindset of the men.

As the worship of nature developed, the primordial high-knowers therefore considered a division of the labor in the supernatural world; there were soul/minds of nature for lakes, trees, waterfalls, rains, and the hundreds of other ordinary earthly phenomena.

The worship of the hills followed that of the stones, and the first venerated hills were big rock formations. Men soon got used to believe that the god-or-demons lived in the mountains, so that, for this (additional) reason they worshipped the rises in the ground which proved to be remarkable. As time passed, some mountains were linked with certain gods or demons, and, consequently, became sacred.

The plants were initially feared, then adored, because of the intoxicating liquors which were extracted from them. Men believed then that intoxication made divine. It was supposed that this experiment comprised something unusual and sacred. Besides we give still the name of “spirits” to alcohols.

The men considered with a superstitious fear and respect, the seeds germinating. The high-knowers were not the last to learn profound spiritual lessons from this phenomenon and to base religious beliefs on it.

The ideas concerning the soul/minds of the trees varied considerably among the different tribes. Certain trees were inhabited by favorable soul/minds, others housed misleading and cruel soul/minds. The adoration worship of the trees is found in the oldest religious groups. All the primitive weddings were celebrated under trees and sometimes, when women wished children, one saw them in the forest embracing affectionately a robust oak. Many trees and plants were venerated because of their medicinal virtues, real or of placebo type. The men believed then that all these chemical reactions were due to the direct activity of supernatural forces.

A long time after the Hebrews had ceased to worship the trees, they continued to venerate their various deities in groves located on sacred hillocks (bamot and ashera).

Joan of Arc herself was not insensitive to their attraction.

“Sunday when we sing in the introit Lætare Jerusalem, Sunday called Sunday of the Fountains, the young men and the maiden in Domremy go under the Tree of the ladies; and also sometimes during spring and summer, during feast days. They dance there, have small meals there, and, when they come back, while playing , or while singing, they go to the Fountain of the Rains; they drink from its water, and while frolicking gather flowers here and there.”

What after all was quite innocent, no reason to go crazy about it or to arouse the ire of a witness of Jehovah, and removes nothing from her courage (verging on unconsciousness).

May or Christmas trees are survivals of this ancient worship.

The man of this time, primarily hunter gatherer, had a kind of brotherhood feeling for the higher order animals. The Hebrews showed besides worship combined with fear towards the powers of the snakes or the golden bull according to the persecutions against them from Moses.

The Celts also revered the animals for their power and their trick. They thought that the olfactory power and the piercing sight of certain animals betrayed the presence in them of a soul/mind.

Our ancestors also regarded all the people having an unusual behavior as being somewhere superhuman (bacuceos). The mad persons for example were feared by their mentally normal companions, who believed them inhabited by the god-or-demons. Later they sanctified even the remarkable soul/minds who were gone into the parallel to ours, world, called hereafter. And certain heroes were deified after their death (cf. Euhemerus).

These deified men must be carefully distinguished from the god-or-demons of nature. The worships of nature continued to develop at the same time as the worship of the great heroes or the great men, appeared later, and each of the two worships exerted an influence on the other. Many religious systems comprised therefore a double design of the divinity, the god-or-demons of nature and the deified men.

When this impulse of worship was well controlled by the primordial druids, it rose then at a very different stage.

Beside the natural need for immediate worship, there had always been also the human experiment of the happenstance which we call the luck or its opposite. The men of this time struggled in order to live, not for a live standard. And they had a perilous existence where the chance played a big role. The

primitive man hunted to feed himself. However the hunting results are necessarily variable. The bad luck was therefore an important factor in the life of men and women living on a precarious and exhausting existence.

These peoples turned thus so much their attention on the haphazardness that the luck quickly became a factor constantly taken into account in their life. The constant apprehension of an unknown and invisible disaster lingered above them as a cloud of despair which often eclipsed all the pleasures; they lived in the constant fear to commit an act which would bring bad luck.

This always-present fear of the bad luck could even be paralyzing. Why work hard and collect the bad luck - to give something for nothing - when you can let oneself led by the haphazardness and to have luck- i.e., to get something for nothing?

Later, the stock breeders of herds had the same point of view on the haphazardness; while, later still, the farmers became more and more aware that harvests were subject to the immediate influence of a large number of factors, on which the dominance of mankind was weak or non-existent. The farmers were victims of dryness, floods, hail, storms, insects and parasitic diseases, as well as heat and cold. Since all these influences affected the individual prosperity, people regarded them as lucks or bad lucks.

This notion of haphazardness and luck strongly pervaded the philosophy of all the peoples in the Antiquity.

The religion was thus reinforced by the fear of the mystery, the respectful fear of the invisible and the terror of the unknown. The fear of nature became consequently a factor in the struggle for existence, initially because of the haphazardness and then because of the mystery. Thus nature and haphazardness were both personified as god-or-demons.

Death was for the men who evolved the higher shock par excellence, the most disconcerting combination of haphazardness and mystery. It was not the sacredness of life, but the shock of the death, which inspired fear and maintained religiosity; men added death to the long list of the unexplained phenomena.

It was believed initially that all the human illnesses, and even the natural death, were due to the influence of soul/minds. This set of observations led to doctrines as that of the fall of the Man or of the Original sin among Judeo-Islamic-Christians (immortality being part, according to them, of the preternatural gifts granted by their God or Demiurge to the first man: Adam).

Primitive men worried much of their breathing. The primitive man knew that his breath could leave his body. The vital breath was therefore regarded as the single phenomenon which differentiated the living from the dead .

Dreams, where he did all kinds of odd things while he was sleeping , completed to convince him that the human being comprised an immaterial element. The most primitive idea concerning the human soul was therefore derived from the system of ideas relating to dream and breathing. The man ends up conceiving that he was a double being: body and soul.

The soul cut from the body was equivalent to ghost.

Although the soul/minds or ghosts have by definition a human origin, man very quickly regarded them as superhuman and this belief in the existence of disembodied soul/minds appeared to explain the unusual, extraordinary, exceptional events.

The primitive doctrines of the survival after death were not necessarily a belief in the immortality. Beings who could not count beyond twenty could hardly conceive infinity and eternity; they thought rather of reincarnations.

These men have in mind no concept of hell nor of eternal punishments in the hereafter. This sadistic and unhealthy idea emerged only later, in sick and perverse brains.

The men of this time imagined the life after death exactly like the present life, the bad luck in less.

The nonmaterial part of man was variously called: ghost, spirit, shadow, spectrum, and more recently soul.

In the dreams of the primitive man, the soul/mind was his double; it resembled very precisely to the mortal himself, except that it was not tangible to the touch. The belief in the doubles, seen in a dream, led to the notion that all the animated or inanimate things, have a soul/mind, like men. This concept tended a long time to perpetuate the belief in the soul/minds of nature.

The phantom soul/mind could be heard and seen, but not be touched. Death was finally regarded as the fact “of giving up the ghost.” All the tribes, except those who exceeded hardly the animal stage, gave themselves concepts relating to such a notion. The soul/mind t was connected to the body like the perfume to the flower.

The Ancients believed that the soul/mind could leave the body in various manners.

1. Ordinary and temporary faint.

2. Sleep, natural dream.

3. Coma and loss of consciousness combined with diseases and accidents.

4. Death and final departure.

The men of this time saw even sneezes as fallen through attempts of the soul/mind to escape from the body. Later, they accompanied the sneezes with an expression such as “gods bless you.” Either the sneeze was named genie, or that it was produced by some inspiring daimon, and whatever the opinion of Socrates was; it is not less certain than the Greeks regarded it as a divine demonstration. Aristotle guarantees it for us. Besides we know by Xenophon and Athenaeus that men treated him with a religious respect.

Abu Hurairah reported that Muhammad said, “Allah likes sneezing, and He dislikes yawning. If any one of you sneezes, he (she) should say ‘Praise be to Allah” and his brother or his companion should send him a wish. If one of you yawns, let him suppress it as much as he can, for that comes from Shaitan.” (Hadith No. 5028, Book of Etiquette, tradition Abu Dawud, Vol. 5. Hadith No. 6224, Book of good upbringing. Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 8).

Men also came very quickly to consider the sleep as proving the soul/mind could go away from the body, and they even believed to be able to recall it back by saying or by shouting the name of the sleeper. In other forms of loss of consciousness, people believed that the soul/mind was more remote, and perhaps sought to escape really: near-death experience (NDE).

Men understood dreams as an experiment of the soul/mind during the sleep, at the time of its temporary absence from the body.

It was believed generally that the soul was identified with the breath, but various tribes also located it in the head, the heart, the blood. The Semites thought that the soul lay in blood and, among many of them, the ingestion of animal blood was taboo. The biblical expression “ Abel’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” (Genesis 4,10) expresses this belief of formerly in the presence of the ghost soul in blood. The Celts located it rather in the brain and people then regarded the eyes as being windows of the soul.

The Greeks themselves believed in the existence of at least three souls, the vegetative one located in the stomach, the animal one in the heart, and the intellectual one in the head.

These ideas on the religion prevented the men from becoming completely fatalistic or hopelessly pessimists; they believed that they could at least do something to influence their destiny.

The progress of the worship of the soul/minds also made inevitable the worship of the ancestors, because it became the link between the ordinary phantoms and the higher soul/minds, the in preparation god-or-demons (the primitive god-or-demons being simply human beings dead and aggrandized as Euhemerus saw it very well ).

The majority of the tribes instituted a festival of all the souls at least once a year. The Romans had a festival of the phantoms called Lemuria. Its rites were described t for us by Ovid.

When midnight comes, lending silence to sleep, and all the dogs and hedgerow birds are quiet, he who remembers ancient rites, and fears the gods, rises (no fetters binding his two feet) and makes the sign with thumb and closed fingers, lest an insubstantial shade meets him in the silence. After cleansing his hands in running water, he turns and first taking some black beans, throws them with averted face: saying, while throwing: ‘With these beans I throw I redeem me and mine.’

He says this nine times without looking back: the shade is thought to gather the beans, and follow behind, unseen.

Again he touches water, and sounds the bronze..., and asks the spirit to leave his house. When nine times he’s cried: ‘Ancestral spirit, depart,’ he looks back, and believes the sacred rite’s fulfilled.

At least it is there what Romans imagined.

As the worship of the soul/minds or of the ancestors was spread, the idea appears there could be higher types of soul/minds, some soul/minds which were not reducible to a well-identified individual. They were ghosts aggrandized then having progressed beyond the country of the ordinary phantoms, in the higher kingdoms.

In order to explain the luck or the bad luck which affected them, the primitive men were little by little led to imagine that it was to exist undoubtedly two categories of higher soul/minds , the good ones and the bad ones. When the doctrines of the goods and bad spirits became mature, it became most widespread and most persistent of all the religious beliefs. This dualism made it possible to men to explain the luck and the bad luck, while believing in super-mortal beings whose behavior could have some logic. He could count on the soul/minds as being either good or bad, and he believed them no longer completely odd like the first ghosts of the majority of the primitive religions. Mankind was finally able to conceive superhuman forces having an about logical behavior: it was one of the most important discovery of the whole history of the religions but the latter however paid a terrible price for this double concept. Primitive philosophy indeed could not reconcile this belief in a minimum of logic of the soul/minds and the vicissitudes of worldly fortune, only by admitting two kinds of soul/minds precisely, the ones good and the other evil. The majority of the religions in the world still carry this cultural birth mark dating back the distant days where the worship of the ghosts emerged. This idea of good and evil as cosmic powers of the same rank, remains very living in the human philosophy (dualism).

The savages imagine that the beneficial soul/mind are occupied with their business while requiring few things from the human beings. They are the bad ghost and the evil soul/minds it is necessary to satisfy and to calm ceaselessly. The primitive peoples therefore paid infinitely more attention to their malicious ghosts than to the kindly soul/minds. (Islam too attaches much importance to the evil eye and the black magic since it selected all kinds of ruqyah against that and particularly the surahs113 and 114.)

The intentions and the will of the soul/minds were studied by the means of presage, oracles or signs, and these messages were interpreted by divination, prediction, magic, ordeals , or thanks to astrology.

It was not simply by curiosity that the Ancients like the Galatian king Dejotarus sought to know the future; they wanted especially to avoid the bad luck. The divination was an attempt to avoid it.

At that time, people regarded the dreams as always more or less prophetic, and all that was out of the ordinary, as an omen.

Thus rose a new and wider philosophy, based on three closely dependent concepts.

The truth - the right comprehension of the soul/minds and the attitude to have towards them, therefore towards life and death.

The duty - the things which should be done to keep the soul/minds in favorable tendencies , or at least neutral.

The good – the behavior and the ceremonies ready to get the soul/minds on one’s side.

In the beginning, man believed that the power or the mana of a sacred object was the phantom of a deceased human being; later, it was supposed that higher soul/minds lay in these sacred items. The primitive men always felt the need to change into a sacred object all that was out of the ordinary; the chance thus gave rise to many sacred objects. The first were stones bearing particular marks, and, since then, the men always sought for the “sacred stones.” See the famous black stone of the Kaaba in Mecca : al-Ḥajar Al-Aswad.

The stones impressed because of the way in which they appeared suddenly on the surface of a farmed field or a meadow. These first men knew neither erosion indeed nor the other phenomena of this type. The stones also made great impression because they often resembled animals. The attention of the civilized men was drawn by many rock formations which, in the mountains, resemble heads of animals and even human faces. All the former clans and tribes had their crowned stones. Many tribes thus had stone fetishes (example linga in India), but few of these fetishes survived, like Kaaba and Stone of Fal or Scone.

In the Irish legend of the Colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam na senorach), the stone of Fal or Scone is evoked as follows.

What had remarkable therefore this stone of Fal? Asked Diarmait the son of Cerball.

If somebody were accused of something, answered Ossian, and that one made him sit down on this stone, if he had told the truth, he became white and red, but if he had lied, a black and quite visible spot appeared on him.

When the true king of Tara sat down on it, the stone roared under his feet and the three waves of Ireland responded it as in echo: the wave of Cliodhna, the wave of Tuaide and the wave of Rudraige.

Whatever the enemy king of province who sat down above, on the other hand, the stone howled or thundered under his feet.

Whatever the sterile woman who sat down above, she was covered with a fine mist of black blood; but when it was a fertile woman, she was covered with mist of all the colors.

The worship of the sacred objects ends up in incorporating thus all the primitive ideas about the ghosts, the souls, the spirits, and the possession. These doctrines of the possession by a soul/mind are what we call animism, but the man does not worship these sacred objects necessarily; he adores and reveres more logically the soul/mind which lives inside. It was supposed that the ghosts preferred to live an object which had belonged to them before their death and during their embodiment in this world.

The ancients always venerated the bones of their great men, and many people still look at the bones of their saints or their heroes with a superstitious fear. Even today, pilgrimages are carried out on the grave of great men.

This belief explains the effectiveness of many modern relics. The worship of relics is a resultant of the ancient worship of fetishes. Some people regard as pagan the belief in the fetishes and the magic, but they find nothing wrong with the relics and the miracles of the saints or of the marabouts? The worship of relics of the current mass religions is only an attempt to rationalize the worship of the primitive fetishes.

The fetish tent of the Hebrews was raised, by Moses, on the level of a super-fetish and the Jews never gave up the belief of the Canaanites in the force of their stone altars, as we already have had the opportunity to note it.

Genesis 28,18. Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel; however, previously the name of the city had been Luz.

It was then believed truly that the spirit of God or of the Demiurge lived in these altars , which were some fetishes.

The first images or idols were made to preserve the appearance and the memory of the famous dead and was actually only monuments. The sanctuaries and the temples were initially graves and became sacred places only because the dead were buried there.

As Camille Jullian said it very well…

“A last cause of religious creations was the fear or the respect, the love or the memory of certain men. And these feelings produced the worship of dead and the apotheosis of the living. No text, no monument allows us to affirm that ........."

Were the graves some monuments of worship or simple places of memory? I do not know. The Celts, at certain times, showed such a contempt of burial and funeral [that the worship of souls could be among them a rather late practice, due to the influence of the Greco-Roman neighborhood.

On the other hand, I have difficulty to believe that they did not endowed with a divine title and worship those of the men who rose above the others by their strength, their courage, their power or their wisdom. Like Greece and Rome, the nation must have its heroes, deified after their death or during their life. Didn't it celebrate with enthusiasm its victorious chiefs and conquerors, the glorious deeds of Ambigatus, Bellovesus and Segovesus? It never forgot the memory of the attackers of the Capitol; the poets created triumphing ancestors for their patrons, the warriors thought ceaselessly of the praises of

the posterity; liberators took the name of gods, and people took their word for it , they considered them invincible and invulnerable. Around the corpse of a rich person people piled up , to make him a procession, the corpses of his slaves and his clients: he had, like Teutates, his human victims ........

This religion of the deified man was not independent of that of the sovereign forces. Like the worship of places and fetishes, that of heroes collaborated to the fortune of the great gods. - This Celtic Hercules [Ogmius], founder of a people and author of its laws, guard of the merchants and of the roads, resemble extremely Teutates, who, Caesar says, was all that. Won't the Greeks have changed the divine Master of the country into a simple hero? or rather, won't the Celts have ended up applying to their national god the undertaking of one their mythical legislators, as the laws of Moses turned to the glory of Jahveh and were considered as his work? - I believe, in addition, that some Genies of the place, gods of rivers or mountains, merged with the spirits of tribe chiefs or ancestors, as well as the soul of Aeneas was united, it is said, with that of the Numicius River. - It is possible, finally, that such residence of Teutates or Esus was in the beginning a venerable grave, a heroon become a temple.”

Our modern tomb stones are therefore a survival of the images and symbols carved in the stone for the soul/minds of the departed companions. Our ancestors believed indeed that a ceremony of dedication could bring the soul/minds in question to enter a statue. In the same way, when certain objects proved blessed, in this case, then they became talismans.

FIFTH LETTER OF THE OLD DRUID OF THE ARDEN FOREST.

Those who tried to define the homo sapiens stopped with this formula: “Man is a religious animal”. This definition is very exact, in the condition of taking the word of religion in its most general meaning and of not seeking in it the expression of theological doctrines similar to that of the modern peoples. In its principle, the religion is primarily a whole of spiritual brakes which restrict the activity or the brutality of mankind, i.e., a system of taboos. The first religious legislations are some collections of interdictions and prohibitions, whose most universal and oldest prohibits the effusion of blood inside a group that the blood ties precisely constituted. It is besides thus it is necessary to understand the (only) fifth of the commands of the Decalogue: the fact of killing an innocent. It is a buffoonery to believe that it was at the time a prohibition with universal and world value. The murder which is aimed by this text it is that of the fellow man or woman , of the member of the clan. The murder of a foreigner therefore by definition of an enemy was unadvised only insofar as it could involve annoying revenge. This prohibition to kill a fellow person was quite relative besides since Leviticus 20 draws up the long list of the exceptions leading to capital punishment by stoning.

But the obstacles put by the superstition to the energy of mankind, protect from the aforesaid energy all the fields where it can be exerted; the taboos relate at the same time to the human kingdom, the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom, that the necessarily animist “savage,” is unable to distinguish with precision. However, insofar as the system of the former taboos concerns the relations of the man with the man, it forms the core of the family and social law, of morality and politics; insofar as it relates to the animal and vegetable world, it constitutes totemism. Totemism, i.e., the set of prohibitions which put a brake on the human activity in its relations with animals and plants; is not only a very corollary of the law and of the morals in their beginnings, but merges with them; exactly like, in the eyes of primitive men and even of the child, men, animals and plants form the same kingdom in which the same vital spirit circulates.

We said that oldest taboos protect only the members of a clan; even in the Decalogue, the words “You shall not kill” do not have the general range that we allocate to them today, even in theory. What it meant in the beginning it is “You will not kill your brother your neighbor the member of your clan, but the foreigner or the enemy which lives on the other side of the dune mountain or river, you will be allowed able to launch an expedition against him, to steal him his goods his cattle or his women.”

The guardian taboos into force in the human clan were extended to the animal or vegetable clan which it incorporated in this way and from which it expected assistance and protection. Thus is explained, so to speak a priori, the fundamental pact which constitutes totemism and which is only the extension of the universal and primitive taboo: “You will not kill a fellow man or woman.”

There is no immutable civilization even among peoples with very slow intellectual evolution, the religious ideas of today are not those of yesterday including in the Judaism, the Judaism of today (the Pharisaism of the Tannaim) being very different from the Hebraism of yesterday.. So we cannot pride ourselves on knowing the primitive totemism but only more or less faded survivals of this primitive totemism. In this respect, there is only a level difference between the clues that classical Antiquity provides us and the detailed accounts of the travelers who studied totemism among the modern “savages.” However, if we limit ourselves to the facts generally observed among the latter, it is possible to compose a kind of totemic code; whose articles (uses or beliefs) are found, in more or less large number, in the religions of the classical people as in the others. There is here like an experimental checking of the primitive universality of totemism; because if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then it is not less certain than the identity of origin of the doctrines expresses itself through that of the fossilized uses which are the logical consequences of it.

Analysis.

1.Certain animals are neither killed, nor eaten, but men breed specimens of them and care gives to them.

Such are geese, hens and hares among the Celts in [Great] Britain ; bears among the Ainu (of whom women nurse sometimes the cubs), dog among the Kalangs in Java, eagle among the Moquis in Arizona. In the Hellenic countries, there are frequent examples of taboo animals which man feeds and

that he raises while regarding them as the property of a deity: such are the heifers devoted to Persephone, in Cyzicus; bears, eagles, horses and oxen in Hierapolis; Juno’s geese on the Capitol in Rome, and so on.

The slave name Luguselva means for example “property of the god or demon Lug ,” but it is obvious that the idea of divine property is secondary and could be born only at a time when an organized priesthood managed for their benefit the properties allocated to the god-or-demon.

2. Man mourns an accidentally died animal and this animal is buried with the same honors as the members of the clan. The fact that several of these animals are not pet , but pests, excludes the assumption, moreover, a priori incredible , of a gratitude worship .

3. Food prohibition sometimes relates only to a part of the body of an animal.

Among the Omaha Indians , the members of the clan of the Black Shoulder should not eat tongues from buffalo; the Eagle clan should not touch a head of buffalo; the Hanga clan should not eat ribs of buffalo, and so on. These partial taboos are risen from practical needs compromises with the absolute prohibition which is primitive.

A Californian tribe, reports Frazer, which worshipped the harrier, annually celebrated a festival whose essential ceremony consisted in killing a harrier without losing a drop of its blood; then it was skinned, people kept the feathers to make with them a sacred clothing intended for the medicine man, and they buried the body in an itself sacred ground.

Thus is explained the ritual of the Buphonia in Athens; the ox, while eating the sacred cakes, is itself asking for its death, and the fictitious lawsuit which is filed after his immolation, comes to the conclusion that the knife alone is guilty; following what it is thrown into the sea. In Tenedos, the priest who offers a young bull to Dionysos, is pursued with stones in Corinth, the annual sacrifice of a goat to Hera Akraia, was performed by foreign religious ministers, appointed for this purpose, those managed to place the knife so that the victim appears to kill itself by accident. Thebans, Herodotus says, regard rams as sacred , therefore do not immolate them, except on the feast day of Zeus. It is the only day of the year when they sacrifice one of them; after what it is skinned and… the statue of Zeus is covered with it skin……when it is done, all those who are around the temple beat their chest, while deploring the death of the ram.

The parallelism of these two accounts is striking. In Herodotus, the skin of the animal is placed on the statue of the god-or-demon; but this rite detail cannot be primitive, since the statues of deities do not date back really to a very early antiquity. It is probable that in the beginning the skin of the animal was reserved to the sacrificer or to the priest, equivalent of the medicine man in the Californian tribe.

The lamentations of the women on the death of Adonis in Syria do not have a different explanation, although the primitive ritual of the Adonia is badly known by us. The object of these lamentations, following the annual sacrifice of the totem, appears to have been to lighten , or to reject, the incurred responsibility. The death of the god-or-demon is cried over, while at the same time its nearest resurrection is not a doubt; it is there a fact of a too easy observation so that it is necessary to insist on that.

4. Men put on the skin of certain animals, particularly in the religious ceremonies; where totemism exists, these animals are totems.

The examples provided by classical Antiquity are numerous, although there is here only presumption of totemism.

It was reported that Zamolxis,after he was born, had been wrapped in a bear skin.

The candidates and the aspirants to the initiation of the mysteries of Sabazios were dressed with a fawn skin; the Attican little girls from age five to ten were called she-bears , and celebrated, bearlike clothed, the worship of Artemis in Brauron, ursine goddess-or-demoness; the pilgrims leaving for Hierapolis sacrificed a sheep, ate it then covered up themselves with its skin.

Among the Tlingit in North America, the men appear, in the solemn occasions, disguised in totem animals. Condor clans in Peru attire themselves in the feathers of this bird. Among the Omaha Indians having for totem the buffalo, the boys wear two hair curls imitating horns. Among the South Slavic people, the male child, after he is born, is covered with a wolf’s skin, and an old woman, outgoing from the house, exclaims: “A she-wolf whelped a wolf.”

We already mentioned the Egyptian rite consisting in covering the statue of the Theban god-or-demon with the skin of the sacrificed billy goat, while pointing out that in the beginning it is the priest, and not the statue, which was to be disguised thus. Robertson Smith ingeniously supposed that the so widespread use to put on the skin of the sacrificed animal, gave rise to the plastic types of god-or-demon with a body of animals like the horse or wild boar; the assumption is all the more acceptable as

the text by Herodotus makes it possible to admit a transitional period, when the skin of the animal was thrown not on the sacrificer, but on the image of a deity.

5.The clans and the individuals bear names of animals; where the totemism exists, these animals are totems.

The fact proves almost constant among the Indians in North America; there are also many examples of them in Australia. In Egypt, the animal names given to nomes or districts appear well to be those of totem animals. In the Hellenic world, we can quote clans like the Porcii in Rome, the Hirpi (wolves) in the Samnium, some peoples like the Myrmidons (ants), the Mysians (mice), the Lycians (wolves), the Arcadians (for Arctadians, the bears).

The case of the Arcadians is particularly interesting besides, because we know that there existed in this country a worship of the ursine Artemis , Callisto, which was changed into she-bear by Hera.

Lubbock and Spencer admitted that the frequent among the primitive people, practice, to bear the name of an animal, gave rise to the totemism: the grandsons of the snake warrior would have convinced themselves that they were really descended from an animal thus designated.

This explanation presupposes wrongly that the idea of the descendants is the crucial factor of the totemism; whereas it is only an assumption of primitive one, intended to give an account of the old alliance which exists between his clan and a clan of animals. The facility with which men take and receive names of animals is an effect, not a cause of the totemism.

6.Many clans make be reproduced on their ensigns and their weapons images of animals; many men paint them on their bodies or print there, through tattooing.

In the ancient world, we see the wolf being reproduced on the Roman ensigns, the wild boar on the Celtic ensigns; whereas other reasons lead us to believe that wolf and wild boar were totems among Romans and Celts.

As the ensigns always precede the troops moving, it is probable that the ensign animal represents the omen animal and the guide animal with which we will deal presently.

In Egypt, the sparrow hawk, which decorates the royal banners, is undoubtedly the totem of the family which founded the royalty in this country.

7. The totem animals, when they are dangerous, are considered to save the members of the totemic clan, but only those who are members of this clan through their birth.

This belief is behind the totemic ordeals, whose classical Antiquity offers examples. Among the Bechuanas in Botswana, there exists a Crocodile clan which delivers the exclusion of the man who was bitten by one of these animals, or even only wet by water that the tail slap from a crocodile would have projected. It is perhaps also advisable to compare to a totemic ordeal the exposure of Romulus and Remus, son of the wolf Mars, that the she-wolf recognizes like hers, by saving them.

8. The totem animals help and protect the members of the totemic clan.

It was said in Egypt that a former monarch had formerly been saved by a crocodile which had made him cross lake Mœris on its back. The Greek legends about helpful animals, like the dolphin of Arion, the fox of Aristomenes, do not have another origin probably; it is necessary to explain in the same way the so many traditions which mention characters of the Fable fed by animals.

9. The totem animals announce the future to their believers and are used as guides by them. We may on this subject remind about the prophetic hare of Boadicea (Boudicca), queen of [Great ] Britain, in a country where, in the time of Caesar, the hare was fed, but not eaten, i.e., treated as a totem; and also about the story of this wolf which was used as a guide by Samnite settlers for the foundation of a colony. This last example is all the more interesting as the Samnites in question were called Hirpini, from the word hirpus which means wolf in the language of Samnium; it is therefore very probable that they recognized the wolf as a totem.

Among Greeks and Romans, we may only suppose that omen animals are former totems; but, in Egypt, Diodorus says to us categorically that the sparrow hawk, totem of the royal line, is venerated because it predicts.

This use of the totem animals as omen animals is probably very old. The men must realize very early that the senses of animals were sharpened than theirs; and it is not surprising that they asked then their totems, i.e., their natural allies; to announce to them the dangers they could not suspect themselves, or the natural advantages (particularly the springs) whose animals seem to have the presentiment. The divination through animals has perhaps no other origin, and this assumption explains why the omen animals appear to have been, in a previous time, at the same time guides, omens and totems.

10.The members of a totemic clan believe themselves very often related to the totem animal by the ties of a common descent.

We enumerate lastly this characteristic that others regarded as essential, because it is, in our opinion, only an assumption suggested to totemists by taboos of which the origin escaped to them; or perhaps

by the traditional designations of their clans. However, as this attempt at explanation is very old, it remains of it traces in classical Antiquity.

The Celtic names of which the first part designates an animal and which end in -genos, or -gnatus, marking a supernatural filiation, like Matugenus (son of the bear), Brannogenus (son of the raven), Boduognatus (son of the crow); are themselves only the reflections of traditions which combined the worship of an animal with a family.

The Ophiogenees of Parium, whose totem was the snake, were believed, as their name indicates it, to be born from a snake ancestor. Strabo reports a fable from Aegina according to which Myrmidons would be ants changed into men following a plague which had depopulated the whole island. This legend originates, of course, in the name itself of the Myrmidons, which means ants; conversely, the name of the Ophiogenees must convey a genealogical legend invented to explain the familiarity of these men with snakes.

On the basis of the data of Australian ethnography, Durkheim made totemism the most elementary form of religious life. That in the Celtic religions therefore in certain druidic Schools we can find a totemistic, or even animistic, component, is undeniable. The animal is an alter ego, a cosmic double of Man; it can be related to a clan or a people, by a mythical pact demanding reciprocal respect even protection. The animal sometimes acts as a momentary vehicle of the human soul/mind at the time of the passage in the other world (it is known then as psychopompous) ; man can also take its shape in various metamorphoses. It is always the favored object of the sacrifices. The animal can finally be in filiation relation with man, what characterizes totemism. Let us remind nevertheless before continuing ahead in this study, than druidism does not have nevertheless as a principal base this kind of belief, and the religious side of the totemism is developed little in it . This one provides especially a principle of ordering the universe, of classification and seriation of human groups, animals and things, giving rise to a whole system of symbolic correspondences and interdictions.

The essential difference between totem and fetish is that this last word designates an individual object; while the totem is a class of objects considered, by the members of the clan or the tribe, as guardian, in the broadest sense of this word. Let us take for example the case of a clan having the bear for totem. The members of this clan will call themselves bears, will say that they are descended from a bear, will abstain from killing bears, will raise pet bears, will use them to question the future, will believe themselves to be sheltered from the attacks of bears, and so on.

In the beginning of the 18th century, missionaries were struck by the importance of totems in the religious, social and political life, of the natives in North America. One of them had even the idea, really brilliant for the time, to apply the totemism facts he studied among the Iroquois that he had in front of him , to the interpretation of a figured type of Greek mythology, that of the Chimera.

During the first two thirds of the 19th century, missionaries and travelers collected a little everywhere facts similar to those that people had observed in the 18th century in America.

People also realized that facts of the same order had formerly been signaled in Peru as of the 16th century and, much more in the past, by the writers of the classical Antiquity, Herodotus, Diodorus, Pausanias, Aelianus, or others. Around 1885, the question was taken over, with more knowledge and criticism, by Robertson Smith and Frazer; it did not cease, since, to be on the agenda.

The fundamental nature of animal totemism is the existence of a badly defined, but of religious nature, pact, between certain clans of men and certain clans of animals.

Although facts of totemism survivals could be noticed, in the 18th and 19th centuries, in all the parts of the world; we can consider totemism persisted , only where civilization remained rudimentary, in particular where the domestication of the animals progressed only little. Indeed, if totemism creates a tie between animals and mankind the natural effect of this tie is often disastrous for the totemism which created it; there is a seemingly paradoxical process, but in truth simple and logical, which was well clarified by F.B. Jevons.

Maybe, indeed, a group of totemic clans which tame bears, snakes or eagles, because they recognize in these animals a supernatural power which they want to reconcile. If these animals hardly lend themselves to domestication, the same situation will be able to remain during centuries. If one of these animals is edible, perhaps people will come to eat it in certain periodic meetings of the clan, where it will be a question of renewing the alliance by a kind of communion of commensality “devogdonion,” with the god-or-demons; but nevertheless they will not be tempted to multiply the meals of this kind,

because the animal, remained wild, will not be continuously available to man, and that the number of the tamed individuals will be necessarily very restricted.

On the other hand, let us suppose clans having for totem bull, wild boar, sheep; certain couples of these species will start by being tamed , then will multiply in the immediate vicinity of the human clans; the periodic sacrifices of totems, and the banquets following these sacrifices, will tend naturally to becoming increasingly frequent, while losing, over time, something of their religious nature to take that of simple feasts. When the animals in question are really domesticated will form large herds kept by dogs, unceasingly in liaison with men; the tradition of the periodic sacrifices and of the common banquets will be maintained, but, in practice, the men will feed themselves more and more with the flesh of the animals; and will therefore cease to show them a high regard The animal clan is no longer the object of a worship; what remains from primitive feeling turns to an isolated animal, regarded as divine, like the bull Apis, the goat of Mendes, the crocodile of the lake Moeris, the lion of Leontopolis, in Egypt. The interdiction to kill out animals of certain species will remain nevertheless in the state of taboo, i.e., of prohibition not justified, or justified afterwards by considerations of a completely different order (hygienic, for example). It is what is still noted among Muslims and Jews.

But the crucial factor of the ruin of the totemism is the constitution of pantheons, i.e., the mythology.

For the design of the divine clans is substituted that of individual divinities, of which genealogies and legends, fixed by the priests and the poets; reflect sometimes totemic traditions, sometimes atmospheric phenomena , sometimes symbolic conceptions, sometimes finally - because there is truth in all the systems suggested – mixing up or purely verbal combinations. Religion emigrates from earth towards heaven; but it does not lose, for that, touch with the earth. After the relaxation of his alliance with the clans of animals, man puts his clans in the clientship of these new god-or-demons. To these god-or-demons, of which the number is quickly reduced by selection and syncretism, are then attached, by rather vague ties, several species of animals. It also happens that the same animal species is put, by the ritual and the legend, in connection with several different god-or-demons, because two or several clans, having the same the totem, allocated it each one to a different god-or-demon.

In the classical Greco-Roman mythology , Jupiter is at the same time eagle, bull and swan; on the other hand, the wolf is at the same time the animal of Apollo and that of Mars, the bull represents Jupiter as well as Dionysus, the dolphin belongs to Apollo as to Neptune. It would be easy to multiply these examples.

Let us observe, before going further, that these animals - attributes, companions, mountings or favorite victims of the god-or-demons - are offered to us, until the end of the ancient mythology, with the distinctive mark of the totems; in what that their sacred nature does not lie in the individual, but in the species. It is not a particular eagle which is the Jupiter’s bird, nor a particular wolf which is the companion of Mars: it is an eagle, an unspecified wolf, representing the species alongside individual deities. The old idea of the holiness of the animal clan was therefore preserved, so to speak, under the cover from the holiness of the god-or-demon.

If mythology contributes to making totemism disappear by absorbing it, it should not be forgotten that it owes partly to its origin. In Greek mythology, for example, there are not only totem animals combined with god-or-demons, but with many legends relating to the change of god-or-demons into animals. These metamorphoses of the Fable are as many poetic expedients through which people made enter the cycle of a divine legend, a previous animal legend. Therefore, Zeus takes the shape of a goose or a swan to allure Leda, who gives birth to an egg. This fable had to rise in a group of tribes which had the swan for a totem, attributed to it a sacrosanct nature ; and admitted - considering the supposed relationship of the animal clan with the human clan - that a swan could copulate with a woman and fertilize her. When the totemism tended to disappear, the legend remained; but so that the feathered lover of Leda remained divine, it was necessary that the mythological tradition represented him as the embodiment of a god-or-demon. So the metamorphosis is not it a primitive data of mythology, but a semi-rationalist assumption to adapt the remainders of the totemism to the taste of the incipient anthropomorphism.

The distribution of the totems of the human clans between the god-or-demons of tribes and the peoples, was not done in a day; it had to be subject to the influence of multiple circumstances, alliances, wars, synecisms, that we can no longer disentangle, of course. One of the most important factors appears to have been the sacrifice ritual, eminently conservative like all the rituals.

Let a clan having a bull for totem and accustomed to sacrifice such an animal periodically. When the era of the individual deities is opened for it, the bull will become the attribute of its principal god-or-demon, and people will offer it in sacrifice to this god-or-demon; not without preserving a more or less precise memory of the divinity of the victim itself. From this combination of a former idea with a new

idea will rise that of the sacrifice of the anthropomorphic god-or-demon, intended to play such a big part in the religious history of Mankind . This design is particularly marked in the worship of the Thracian Dionysus, Zagreus, which, according to the legend risen from the ritual, was formerly cut up then devoured by the Titans, in the shape of a young bull, which he would have taken to escape to them. As long as the divinity resided in the species and not in the individual, the sacrifices of this kind could be renewed indefinitely; each bull which people killed then of which they shared the bloody limbs was as a new chosen vase whose sacrifice let remain, in the animal species an inexhaustible reservoir of holiness. But when the divinity, up to that point diffuses, concentrated in a particular individual, the idea of the immolation of the god-or-demon became acceptable only on the condition of admitting, as corrective measure, the resurrection of the god-or-demon in question. It is precisely what we find in the legend of Zagreus-Dionysus who, devoured by the Titans, ancestors of men, is given returned to a glorious life by Jupiter.

Generally, nevertheless, however, anthropomorphism had as a result to weaken the idea of the immolation of the god-or-demon in order to strengthen that of the immolation of the victim, offered to the god-or-demon as present or atonement. This idea is not primitive, since that of the individual god-or-demons is not so, and that the anthropomorphism, from which it is inseparable, marks in the history of the religions a rather recent phase. However, as of the time of Homer and Hesiod, it had prevailed in Greece so completely that people know no longer others, if not in the state of mystical survivals. Where we find rites involving the belief in the death of a god-or-demon, the lamentations of which this death is the signal, then the exuberant joy which greets his resurrection in the flesh , we are therefore in the presence of remains of totemism. It is what it would be easy to show by analyzing the ritual of the festivals of Adonis; that the legend makes die because of a wild boar, animal remained taboo in Syria, but who, in the beginning, is the totem wild boar itself, object of an annual sacrifice of communion of the type “devogdonion” commensality meal.

N.B. Resemblance to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ stops there.

In the totemic time, man does not offer victims to his god-or-demons or their priests, because he knows neither god-or-demons yet nor priests. The clan sanctifies itself, it renews his provision of holiness by eating, following the rites, a totem animal. This need survived the phase of strict totemism, and that in two forms. Sometimes, a totem animal, regarded as an impure animal, continued to be eaten ritually. It is what was to occur in certain mystical groups of Jerusalem, according to the following passage of Isaiah (66, 17). “"Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go to the gardens, following one in the center, who eat swine's flesh, detestable things and mice, will come to an end altogether," declares the LORD. These prohibited foods already had to play the role of the potions which we find in all the witch pharmacopeia, and which generally is considered for all the more effective as the ingredients are more disgusting and more horrible; but the idea of sanctification and purification is still clearly underlined by this text, because the habit against which Isaiah protests with energy, is only a vestige of the most distant religious past.

Secondly , when the need to sanctify oneself was no longer able to be satisfied at the expense of an animal, dispossessed of its prestige in consequence of the totemism decline; it became inevitable that it turned to the man himself, homo res sacra homini. Whence the human sacrifices accompanied by acts of cannibalism, which it is necessary well to regard as substitutes for the totemic sacrifice. There are of them many traces in the classic authors, although generally this cannibalism is limited to taste the blood of the victim or a small portion of his body. The most important texts in this respect are those of Plato and Pausanias on the worship of Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia, where some specialists wanted, quite wrongly, to see a Phoenician Baal. This worship took the continuation of a totemic worship of the wolf, which comprised the ritual sacrifice of the animal and a banquet, through which the faithful believed to digest the holiness of the victim, and to become themselves divine wolves. When the totem wolf had been replaced by the lupine Zeus, the rites were preserved; but the victim was a man devoted to the god-or-demon; the faithful, after having tasted his flesh, believed being changed into wolves and gave each other the name of lykoi, in the same way that the female believers of Bassareus (the fox-Dionysus) became some Bassarides, and those of the ursine Artemis some Arktoi.

Below passage found crossed out in the original manuscript.

N.B. Our societies tried to compensate in a certain way for the disappearance of the religion within public space by stardom. The passion that certain stars unleash can completely be equated with idolatry, certain admirers devoting a true worship to their “new god-or-demons.” This strong media coverage of certain individuals, seemingly insignificant, occupies from now on the same role as not long ago the religious fact, and conveys an example of exaggerated individualism in perfect adequacy with the current consumer society.

THIRD LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

…………….The belief in any primitive monotheism of the Adam and Eve or Abraham type is obviously a fable, simplistic and anti scientific but fraught with consequence because it places on our unfortunate ancestors the suspicion to have betrayed it and have given up voluntarily (from where the epidermal reactions of the pious Muslims against the polytheists or the believers not forming part of the community of the people of one book).

The ancient mindset was handicapped by the lack of noted facts, but in spite of all that, it remained logical nevertheless. We have had all the same brain for at least 100 000 years. And when men think about illness and death, they always undertake to determine the causes of these misfortunes, in accordance with their comprehension of the Bitus or universe.

It is indeed always easier to reason starting from established assumptions (even arbitrarily) that in a system of equations with multiple unknowns. It is therefore necessary not to lose sight of the fact that the belief in some nature powers comes from the fear of the unexplainable one. The sociologists consider that the need for God or the Demiurge has his source in the fear Man feels facing the unknown and the forces of nature which are beyond him. The first beliefs therefore resulted in animism. To limit the influence of the fear over their life, the men allocated a personality to the elements in nature (volcano, rain, river, ocean…) by thinking that if their action satisfied “the soul/minds,” then they would be protected. Over the thousands years , these primitive beliefs became more and more complex to generate polytheistic religions with very complex panth-eons.

Modern Man tackles his material problems directly; he recognizes that matter is flexible and responds the intelligent handling of the mindset. The primitive man too wished to modify and to even control, the life and energies of the physical field; but his limited comprehension of the cosmos led him to believe that god-or-demons dealt personally and immediately with the detailed control of life and matter. He therefore directed his efforts logically with an aim of getting the favor and the support of these superhuman agents.

Most of the unexplainable and irrational elements of the former worships consequently become comprehensible. The ceremonies of worship were attempts of the men of this time to control the material world in which they were. Many of their efforts tended to prolong the life and to ensure the health.

The whole life of the Ancients was centered on the disease prevention; their religion was, on the whole, a technique to prevent the diseases. Independently from the mistake of their theories, these men were sincere by while implementing them in these ways. They had a faith unlimited in their methods of treatment, and this only factor was besides already in itself a powerful remedy (placebo effect). They treated the disease by intoning, by howling, by laying hands, by blowing on the patient and by many other techniques.

The high-knowers of the time learned how to reset fractures and dislocations, to burst boils and abscesses.

A long time was not necessary to also introduce into these treatments the medicinal plants and other true drugs of this type. The massage developed, in connection with the incantations, to drive out the body the evil soul/minds, by friction; it was preceded by efforts to introduce drugs also through friction, similar to the modern attempts to make liniments penetrate. The primitive people also discovered that warm relieved the suffering; they used the rays of the sun, some organs of freshly killed animals, hot clay, heated stones. Water was also used for the treatment of a large number of diseases. It was believed for a long time that the soul/mind causing the disease could be eliminated by sweat. People gave much credence to the steam baths. Primitive spa resorts flourished around the natural thermal springs.

Later in the sanctuaries, they had recourse to the sleep during which people supposed that the cure took place, and this habit spread. There were besides high-knowers who, while acting s priests, also worked as doctors even surgeons. The high-knower ended up indeed in testing true surgical operations related to the sleep; the trephination with a drill (tarinca), to make possible the escape of a soul/mind causing the headache, was one of the first operations. Archeologists found in Germany in a grave exhumed in Obermenzing in Bavaria, the body of a man who was probably a surgeon high-knower, living about year 200 before our era. He had been buried indeed with a sword, a spear and a shield, but he was especially a doctor and not a warrior; since they found in his grave trephine (

making it possible to withdraw from the cranium small bone sections in order to reduce the pressure exerted by the brain-pan on the brain), a probe and a retractor. Cf Jose Maria de Navarro and his study on the grave of a Latenian surgeon found in Bavaria, published in 1955 by the prehistoric Society.

As the religion evolved, the priests started to be specialized according to their innate talents or their particular predilections. Some became singers, other priors and others again sacrificers; later the speakers and the preachers came.

FOURTH LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER AREMI.

REGARDING THE BLUE DANUBE.

………The couple Mountain and River was always the central theme of many cosmogonic legends, including as far as China. In the very middle of the cradle of the Celtic people, in the same area as the springs of the Danube, Avienus speaks to us about a mountain called “column of the sun” (solis columna. The Dammastock?) A column located by our author at the spring of the Rhone, but considering the time (the sixth century before our era) we can wonder if it was not a mixing up ?Herodotus placed well the spring of the Danube in the Pyrenees, so?

Avienus. Ora maritima.

Many considerations have compelled us to write extensively on the Rhone.

But my mind will never be inclined to assert that Europe and Libya are divided by that river.

Phileus, though an ancient author, would say that the inhabitants had thought this.

Let this barbarous ignorance be despised and derided and branded with a suitable name. ….

The Alps raise their snowy ridge up into the sky in the east,

And the fields of Gallic soil are cut by its rocky height.

Winds are always breathing storms.

The Rhone River flows from here

And raising itself up at its source cuts through a gaping cave with savage force.

It is navigable at its first source and rising.

But that side of the ridge that rises up and gives forth the river,

The natives call the "Pillar of the Sun" [the Dammastock?].

For it rises up to the heavens with such great height

That the midday sun is scarcely visible

Due to the constant barrier of the ridge

When it approaches the limits of north to carry the day here.

For you know that such was the view of the Epicureans.

The sun does not set, it does not sink into the waters, it is never hidden.

Rather it goes around the world; it runs through the corners of the sky,

Gives life to the land, and gives nourishment with the food of its light to all the vault of heaven,

But to certain regions in turn, the bright torch of Phoebus is denied.

A mountain is opposed to it with its high summit which,

Being prolonged from the Occident until extreme north,

Divides into two parts the extent of the world and the course of the sun.

When the sun cuts through the southern course

And the light sinks on the Atlantic axis

In order that the sun spread its fire to the furthermost Hyperboreans

And bring itself back to the Achaemenian rising [Iran today],

It bends towards other sections of the sky curved course

And passes the limit constituted by this mount.

And when he denies bright light to our view, black night rushes from the sky,

And murky darkness suddenly covers all in our area.

But clear day then enlightens those who shiver exposed to the north wind.

But again when shade of night possesses the Bear,

Our entire race passes a splendid day.”

We are there much closer to the image of Indian Mount Meru than to the ash Yggdrasil in the Germanic ones.

Petronius: Satyricon, 122.

“....There, high in the Alps, where the crags, by a Greek god once trodden,

Slope down and permit of approach, is a spot ever sacred

To Hercules' altar; the winter with frozen snow seals it

And rears to the heavens a summit eternally hoary,

As though the sky there had slipped down, no warmth from the sunbeams,

No breath from the Springtime can soften the peak's wintry rigor

Nor slacken the frost chains that bind and its menacing shoulders

The weight of the world could sustain ...”

Variant of the expedition of the Argonauts according to Apollonius of Rhodes (book fourth).

And far on sped Argo under sail,

Entered deep into the stream of Eridanus;

Where once, smitten on the breast by the blazing bolt,

Phaethon half-consumed fell from the chariot of the sun [Greek Helios]

Into the opening of that deep lake;

And even now it belches up heavy steam clouds

From the smoldering wound.

No bird spreading its light wings can cross that water;

But in mid-course it plunges into the flame, fluttering.

And all around the maidens, the daughters of the sun [Greek Helios],

Enclosed in tall poplars,

Wretchedly wail a piteous plaint;

From their eyes they shed

On the ground bright drops of amber.

These are dried by the sun upon the sand;

But whenever the waters of the dark lake flow over the strand

Before the blast of the wailing wind,

Then they roll on in a mass into Eridanus with swelling tide.

The Celts have attached this story to them,

That these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo,

That are borne along by the eddies,

The countless tears that he shed aforetime

When he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans

And left shining heaven at the chiding of his father,

Being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare

In bright Lacereia 1) [today the town of Larissa in Greece] near the river Amyrus.

But no desire for food or drink seized the heroes

Nor were their thoughts turned to joy.

But they were sorely afflicted all day,

Heavy and faint at heart,

With the noisome stench, hard to endure,

Which the streams of Eridanus sent forth from Phaethon still burning;

And at night they heard the piercing lament of the daughters of the Sun,

Wailing with shrill voice; and, as they lamented,

Their tears were born on the water like drops of oil.

Thence they entered the deep stream of Rhodanus

Which flows into Eridanus,

Where they meet there is a roar of mingling waters.

Now that river, rising from the ends of the Earth,

Where are the portals and mansions of Night,

On one side bursts forth upon the beach of Ocean,

At another pours into the Ionian Sea,

And on the third through seven mouths

Sends its stream to the Sardinian sea and its limitless bay 2).

And from Rhodanus they entered stormy lakes,

Which spread throughout the Celtic mainland of wondrous size;

And there they would have met with an inglorious calamity;

For a certain branch of the river was bearing them towards a gulf of Ocean

Which in unknowing they were about to enter,

And never would they have returned from there in safety.

But Hera leaping forth from heaven pealed her cry from the Hercynian rock 3);

And all together were shaken with fear of her cry;

For terribly crashed the mighty firmament.

Backward they turned by reason of the goddess,

And noted the path by which their return was ordained.

And after a long while, they came to the beach of the surging sea

By the devising of Hera,

Passing unharmed through countless tribes of the Celts and Ligyans.

For round them the goddess poured a dread mist

Day by day as they fared on.

And so, sailing through the midmost mouth,

They reached the Stoechades islands in safety by the aid of the sons of Zeus [the Dioscuri];

Wherefore altars and sacred rites are established in their honor for ever…

1) Town of Thessaly, in Magnesia.

2) The Gulf of Lion. Apollonius considers the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po, as three branches of the same river.

3) The Black Forest. The Breg is longest of the two brooks which are met to form the Danube. It seeps out at 1078 m above the sea level close to Furtwangen. Its spring is the true origin of the Danube. After a course of 49 km, it joined the Brigach in Donaueschingen. The spring of the Breg spouts out at a hundred meters away from the watershed between the Rhine and the Danube. It is only 200 meters away of it indeed that the spring of another brook is, The Elz, whose water will join, through the Rhine, the North Sea. The coincidence had to make more one person think about that at the time.

FIFTH LETTER OF THE DRUID JEAN MARTIN.

THE VARIOUS SUPPORTS OF MEDITATION KNOWN IN THE ANCIENT DRUIDISM.

To revere the god-or-demons.

…………..The verb to revere, of course, emphasizes the distance which still separates us (from the god-or-demons), much more than the complicity which links us, but it also stresses the truth of the beings.

It is a question of recognizing the god-or-demons for what they are, and to serve them while following the best of their example. More than the refusal of every blasphemy, what is important in fact, it is the respect of truth, the respect of its mystery. To revere the god-or-demons requires an examination of oneself; whence besides the reaction of Brennus in Greece when he saw the treasures which people had wasted for them.

The material support of this meditation can be pure water offered in sacrifice; an apple, salted butter (imbmen in old Celtic from where anmann in Breton language) a small pertaining to worship tree like that of Manching in Germany (which was 70 cm high) or a terra cotta statuette representing such or such deity. When you one could not offer a bronze statuette, an image symbolizing this deity engraved or painted on a wood tablet was indeed enough to visualize its divine guest and to enter a dialog with him.

All kinds of rituals, of course, could be used to begin this meditation (prayer, throwing of amber in fire, or other).

The Celtic name of butter (Irish ims Breton anmann Welsh ymenyn) is related with designations of the ointment and oiling, which makes it possible to suspect a word having lost there a strong primitive religious value. It seems that butter was in the magic operations, the substitute of honey or wax.

In India, as of Vedic times, butter had a sacred value. Butter is therefore an essential component of the sacrifice: it is a favored substance of oblations. Spread on fire, it makes it crackle. Concentrate of vital forces butter symbolizes all the energies, those of Cosmos, those of the soul, those of god-or-demons and men, whom it is supposed to regenerate by sizzling in the fire of the sacrifices. Insofar as butter, with a traditional gesture, is thrown on ember, it can evoke a source of sacred energy suitable to raise the universe.

In the 8th century still, according to a gloss of Saint-Gall in Switzerland, the Irishmen called upon Goibniu (Gobannus) for the preservation of butter, which was regarded as fixed vital energy.

But let us return to our sheep!

The druidicist sat with his crossed in the way of Hornunnos beneath an oak, in front of an apple, butter or a divine statuette referring the next world.

Then the withdrawal of the senses from the outside world comes, so that you notice no longer what occurs around yourself. Such a putting on hold of one's senses leads to rest state necessary to the full focusing. The myths relating to the great Hornunnos say eloquently how much it is difficult to tear off from his concentration an awenydd (a kinges?) who thus leaves aside the outside world.

After the withdrawal of the senses from the outside world, a parallel process concerning the inner world starts.

There too, the goal is to gradually eliminate the multiplicity of the representations to direct all one’s awareness towards one contemplation object.

For more details on this intra-psychological yoga of the Lugian type, to refer to the study on the will of sovereignty published in 1987 in the No. 19 to 22 of the Triscele, organ of the FRG.

If you succeed in reaching this goal, the concentration leads finally to the overall vision of the chosen meditation support ,to the full grasping of all its dimensions.

This process is not a “simple” incorporation of the man into the material support; because the purpose of it is to ensure the simultaneous presence of the divine one in the man and in the statue, in the apple, the water or the butter, like the flame of a torch being given to another.

Such a process, on the one hand, makes the communication on an equal footing possible, but also causes the conditions of a correct external veneration of the symbol or of the simulacrum of the god or demon.

In a last stage, the penetration and the spiritual experiment of the meditation support, goes up to the abolition of the distance between the subject of this process and the object. The separation between both is removed in this point of the space-time. They become one. What occurs then is called awenydd. It is a flashing blaze of knowledge including everything. It is a lived experiment in which all that exists is melted in one point.

Such is perhaps the only true meaning of the famous battle of the trees (Cad goddeu) by Taliesin.

Bum yn lliaws rith

Kyn bum kisgyfrith.

Bum cledyf culurith.

Credaf pan writh.

Bum deigyr yn awyr.

Bum serwaw syr.

Bum geir yn llythyr.

Bum llyfyr ym prifder.

Bum llugyrn lleufer

Blwydyn a hanher.

Bum pont ar triger.

Ar trugein aber.

Bum hynt bym eryr.

Bum corwc ymyr.

Bum darwed yn llat.

Bum das ygkawat.

Bum cledyf yn aghat.

Bum yscwyt ygkat.

Bum tant yn telyn

Lletrithawdc naw blwydyn.

Yn dwfyr yn ewyn.

Bum yspwg yn tan.

Bum gwyd yngwarthan.

I have been in a multitude of shapes,

Before I assumed a consistent form (that of awenydd?)

I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,

I will believe when it is apparent.

I have been a tear in the air,

I have been the dullest of stars.

I have been a word among letters,

I have been a book in the origin.

I have been the light of lanterns,

A year and a half.

I have been a continuing bridge,

Over three score estuaries.

I have journeyed as an eagle.

I have been a coracle in the seas:

I have been a director in battle.

I have been a drop in a shower;

I have been a sword in the grasp of the hand

I have been a shield in battle.

I have been a string in a harp,

Enchanted for a year

In the foam of water.

I have been sponge in the fire,

I have been wood in the covert.

A sword, star, lantern, string, wood… were supports of such a meditation for Taliesin who translates in his way this metaphysical notion of the multiple states of the Being: I have journeyed as an eagle in the air.

The druidicists have at their disposal many other techniques to reach the state of awenydd. But we will not be able to say more here considering the place which remains to us. Not to forget that this opuscule is only a summary of some pages intended for youth. Therefore refer to the serious (and showing profundity ) various druidic works devoted to this subject.

The devotion to the sacred-heafod of Hesus Cuchulainn falls within this same line. It is a technique of meditation inserted in a retrospective contemplation of the wounds of our Lord, particularly that of his beheading against the standing stone in Muirthemne, or in the symbolic contemplation of the skull of the last of the half-god-or-demons. Of the human era. The topic of this miraculous cut head was, of course, recovered by the Christianity which made it a miracle performed by certain saints (known as cephalophorous, like St. Denis first bishop of Paris).

And there are besides so many of them that even the Catholic historians deny the reality of such “miracles.” Thus, according to Father Cahier for example, “Their number has something exorbitant, and would result in believing that this wonder would have almost been normal.” Besides the simple common sense is enough to deny that such a fact is possible. From where come then all these legends? As it is often the case, it is an old rite which, being no longer understood, ended up receiving a miraculous interpretation.

Many old graves contained bodies whose head had obviously been separate. Case for example of St. Gervasius but also of St. Protasius in Italy in Milan.

One day, St. Ambrosius, who was in prayer in the church, had the aisling (vision) of two young people of a great beauty, wearing a white tunic, who prayed with him, their hands raised to heaven. Saint Ambrosius therefore asked God or the Demiurge, if it was an illusion, that it were no longer reproduced, but if it was the reality, that he wants well grant him again this aisling (this vision).

Little time after, at daybreak, St Ambrosius saw again the two young men, this time in the company of St. Paul. And it is the apostle who spoke with the following words to the bishop in order to say to him: “Here those who, according to my advice, wanted nothing from earthly things, rest in peace; you will find their bodies in the place where you are in this moment; at twelve feet under, you will find a crypt covered with earth, and near their head a little book containing the account of their birth as that of their death.”

When St. Ambrosius makes the corpses of the two saints exhumed, saints whose heads had not been laid out in their usual place above the shoulders, of course, he regards them at once as martyrs.

Many cemeteries containing corpses whose head was unusually laid out similarly became some “martyr fields.”

But how did we pass from the idea of martyr by beheading to that of miracleS or of cephalophorous saints?

If we accept the traditional idea of tripartition Heaven-Man-Earth matching the triad Soul-Mind-Body, the head of the man, round, corresponds to the Heaven and the Soul/Mind. Its detachment from the rest of the corpse at the time of death is therefore undoubtedly to link with the idea of immortality granted traditionally to the Spirit. There exist several hagiographic texts telling how beheaded martyrs pick their head and ascend to Heaven in order to present it to God or the Demiurge. It is probably the idea of this “travel” which inspired the biographers of cephalophorous saints. Besides many saints bring their head on the top of a mountain, universal symbol of the rise towards the divinity. Certain heads continue to speak. But this “phenomenon” was already reported in traditions previous to Christianity: that of Bran continued to speak even to feast with his. In Scandinavia, Odin had a speaking head, that of the sage Mim or Mimir that he had made encased in gold when this hero died.

Let us not forget either the symbolism of the skull in freemasonry.

ELEVENTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE MENAPIAN FOREST.

……… Lucan brings to our attention in a sacred wood close to Marseilles (the Sainte-Baume), coarsely carved tree trunks representing the god-or-demons: maesta deorum simulacra. And Caesar too uses the word in connection with Mercury: cujus sunt plura simulacra. Simulacrum in fact has the little vague meaning of images or symbols, even of icons.

The simulacra or arcana are totems poles statues or images used as devotion or meditation supports. They are sometimes abstract, sometimes coarse like those described by Lucan or Caesar, but generally they are representations of god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, such as Hornunnos, our Rigantona Épona, Hesus, or many others, who can be extremely complex characters. They can also be frescos or paintings as that which represented Ogmius and signaled by Lucian of Samosata in the surroundings of Marseilles; even those of Epona in the Roman world.

Since the mind of the believer is too often as bogged down in the turbulence of the life in this world, the world of mankind, the middle earth, and, consequently, not easily able to concentrate on a shapeless divinity without form, the simulacrum dress the divine one with a shape in order to be used as support for its devotion.

The worship of the simulacra or arcana is generally interpreted as some idolatry by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that leads therefore to an erroneous or negative judgment from the historians about this form of devotion which must rather be brought together with that of icons. The veneration of an image or a statue representing an ideal or a higher principle, does not identify therefore the divinity with the material object itself.

If you one sees your environment as ordinary, that will not be a great assistance. But if you visualize it as a true wonder, then you will realize the natural purity of it which is soiled only by the human disorders. If one keep in your mind this visualized simulacrum, you will gradually change your way of looking at things. If, for example, you see frescos depicting the life of Ogmius on the walls of a fanum (temple), then the faith in his powers and in what he represents will increase. If the walls were only white, they would not cause inspiration.

The majority of the Celts venerated several god-or-demons, and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this word is preferred, in whom they saw only various aspects of the same expressed divine reality.

Like Danielou (the Orientalist, not the bishop) says it: the image of a god-or-demon is only a shape used to attract or concentrate the thought on an abstraction. These simulacra are objects of meditation which have a precise purpose: to change our ordinary perception of the world into a perception of the primordial perfection lying in all the phenomena.

While meditating on a simulacrum, you come from there to perceive the universe as an enchanted world. All the sounds of the universe - noises of water, fire, wind, the cries of the animals, the voices of the human beings - become then like as many prayers or spiritual energies.

The veneration of the arcana or simulacra (images) comes as much under the private worship as under the public worship. These images have their own life: for instance the statue of Litavis/Nerthus periodically left from a lake… The divine image (arcane or simulacrum) is a representation, but the higher Reality overflows infinitely, of course, the shape which evokes it .

The true hearted or minded Celts see the various god-or-demons only as various manifestations of the true One, of the shapeless, therefore aniconic on this ontological level, divine principle.

NINTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE ARDEN FOREST.

……….The pantheist unity with the higher deity can be gotten by a simple meditation. This meditation of the druidic type makes it possible to be detached from the vulgar thoughts to concentrate on the beneficial manifestations of the Bitus or Pariollon; thanks to the intermediary of living beings like stars or trees, or thanks to the intermediary of beings considered as “inanimate,” today. Because they have too , a soul/mind in fact, like wrote one day a famous poet (inanimate objects, do you have a soul?)

Therefore let us see together examples of this process.

The Great-Spirit (Great Manitou our Algonquin friends say) being working in each individual soul (anamone) it is enough to become aware of this permanent presence to begin to feel one’s soul opened out; because only such an experiment of mystical and nonintellectual knowledge can raise us to the state of awenydd.

To communicate with the higher being, it is initially necessary to rise oneself to the Universe. “Divinis humana licet componere”“We may compare things human with divine” Ausonius (poem on the use of the word libra).

It is necessary to change oneself therefore to become deified , to become suited to the presence of the divine one. This metamorphosis is the goal of the ritual meditation beneath an oak.

In such a meditation, the riastrade of the path of the kingeto (of the Gaesati) is moderated. It is no longer a question, like in the case of the martial yoga in a stricter sense of the word, of reaching an unlimited power, but only of the purification necessary so that the thought or the reflection can develop without being disturbed by physiological functions.

Let us note on this subject that oxygen and rustles of the forest are factors favorable to such an experiment.

To know the Big Whole by returning to the absolute immanent awareness, or to experiment the absolute immanent of or Bitus even the Higher Being as of this world; i.e., in the condition which is ours (the world of the contingencies and of the limitations, the world of the mere mortals, the world of the cosmic great mother goddess-or-demoness); cannot be performed in an only intellectual knowledge. What it is necessary to do to get this result (the awenydd) at least comes within meditation.

The meditation of the Kinges is also blossoming impulse of the soul and internalization impulse. In a methodical and systematic way, it must lead man to the ultimate reality which is fullness. It is impulse from the tangible outside to the spiritual inside. It is accomplishment , all this through an ordered progression.

- First the wanted and deliberate concentration, often non-free from tensions, and got using bodily and psychological means. It is enough for that to choose one of the god-or-demons of the pantheons and to begin to revere in oneself the particular form of relation that this god-or-demon keeps with the Universe.

- Then the contemplation, a passive shock which we generally forget very quickly.

SEVENTH LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER JEAN MARTIN.

………..A certain disappointment always rises from activities achieved in vain (we are never dissatisfied when we sleep and when we dream). But the druidism does not conclude from it therefore, unlike Buddhism, that it is necessary to cease every activity. The true stop that we must get, to put an end to this permanent dissatisfaction which characterizes the gdonios, the human being, at least in the West, is that of the formation of psychic constructions blocking our mind. Every action which adds to these constructions is consequently to avoid. But the actions do not have to be always avoided either, because it is possible to direct well the acts which inevitably result from this. Such is for example the goal of the Celtic martial art. Because the installation in our minds, of kinds of reflexes, which initially will direct positively our agitation, then finally will concentrate it, can be got only by a systematic body and mind drill.

The path which leads to the other world is also a technique, a technique of psychic behavior and training. This technique leads to the better world known as better of which everyone dreams, while resorting to four different developments , matching four different stages in the evolution of the individual towards this goal.

The first stage is that of the mere mortal who moves on one of the ways of the druidism.

The second stage is that of the mortal who reaches, but only briefly and temporarily, a fraction of a second, during his very lifetime, the next world.

The third stage is that of the blessed pleasant to attend meldus, who does not reappear in this world after his death but in another one.

The fourth stage is that of the Master who reaches the world of the god-or-demons and definitively, during his very lifetime , but in plus with the ability of going down again on Earth in the shape of a anatiomarus (a great initiate called semnotheos in Greek language).

The psychic techniques include initially leanings , or turns given to the psyche by a usual orientation towards determined thoughts, being actualized in a direction favorable to the progression of the individual. For example, visual exercises or mental evocations, like that which consists in fixing a statuette of god-or-demon, or a flame, until its image remains as engraved in the retina even after having closed one’s eyes…

Meditations advanced until this representation is as clear as a real vision, and engages in the psyche quite precise phenomenal series.

One of the best examples of technically regulated meditation is the Celtic martial art, which is a progressive training to the emptiness of the awareness, prefiguring the final stop which will be carried out through the return to the Big Whole.

This training to Celtic martial arts also comprises, four stages.

In the first, you proceed by exclusion of the bad inclinations. After that come automatically feelings of joy or even of happiness, risen from this exclusion of the bad thoughts accompanying the mental activities which are reasoning, reflection, judgment.

The practice of martial arts was spread besides for this purpose by Bodhidharma, unto the other end of the Aryan world, and even into China (Shaolin).

In the second stage, there is even calming of the mental activities having presided over the training of these martial arts, everything being become reflex or automatism.

Thus remain in the arena only the most complete serenity, the calm in the mind and, consequently, joy and happiness.

In the third stage, there is even disappearance of this feeling of happiness. The practitioner of these martial arts became imperturbable, but still fully conscious. He tastes the most complete bliss, without ratiocinating thought nor noisy demonstration of joy.

In the last of the four stages of the progress towards the return into the Big Whole, the comrunos (the initiate) finds himself in possession, as of this world, of a first form of this return to origin. On his death, he will be dissolved definitively into the Big Whole like a water drop into the sea.

The possible later stage, the reincarnation on Earth in the shape of an anatiomarus (great initiate), or bacuceus even seibarus, is more problematic.

FOURTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER IN THE MENAPIAN FOREST.

…………The divine beings too, ended up , like the soul/minds, in being conceived as some thoughts, some energies without tangible shape, without material needs; whose way of life had no longer something comparable with the way of life of the men made of flesh and bones, who inhabit the middle earth. At the same time, the limitations, the imperfections which the representations made of them formerly, involved, disappeared! Their number was restricted, their power grew accordingly. It became incomparable with that of the man, who little by little stripped himself from his own supernatural attributes. The belief in the magic declined and had to share its empire on the minds with the religion…

The worship was purified like the theology. Changed by a new design of the divine one and by the procession of the emotions which it dragged naturally in its wake; it reacted in turn on the religious feeling which it has ennobled, widened, and strengthened, in the souls and the awareness where the former beliefs lived still obscurely; it caused in their piety more rigorous requirements, which forced them to reflect on the dogmas and the myths they accepted passively, and to confer a higher meaning to them. But the invention is very often only a renovation of old and already forgotten forms, a restoration of almost given up old rites that the religion which seizes them purifies and spiritualizes. In this field mankind is hardly accustomed to innovate. The most exemplary case in this respect is that of Islam which took over again and reinterpreted ancient pagan Meccan rites by claiming that it was original monotheist rites (what a buffoonery) if necessary by injecting in it tardily many inventions staging Abraham and his theirs, or the archangel Gabriel. The Abraham which we know being a purely fictitious character, just like Moses, Islam therefore made only in fact adding lies to tall stories.

Every religion fully made up involves an official and public worship; it concerns the entire group, clan, tribe, or nation; it is a social thing as much as an individual affair. It is not only the material and spiritual interest of each individual or each family which is in question in the relations with the god-or-demons, it is the collective interest of the society. The inevitable consequence is that the celebration of the rites must therefore belong, in every society which conquered some coherence and some stability, to a man invested with public authorities; to a man who embodies in his person the whole community, and who has authority to perform the ceremonies in the name of all; in a word, any religion involves consequently the existence of a priesthood, at least any religion where some rites remained. We have of that a very good example with the Judges among former Hebrews according to the Bible (1 Samuel 8.7).

The role of the priest will be all the more important as the nature of the religion in question will be more ritualistic, as the sacrificial practices and the related ceremonies will have a broader place in it. In a purely spiritualistic religion from which every sacramental rite would have disappeared, the priest gives way to the prophet, to the inspired man, to the doctor of the law. In the minister of the Reformed religion, the Muslim imam mufti, it is hardly if it remains something of the true priestly nature.

What distinguishes the druid from the shaman in the ancient religions, it is not the nature of the practices to which they have recourse one and the other, of the ceremonies which they celebrate - they are in many cases identical -; they are their relations with the society. The shaman is a private man, the druid a public figure. The shaman,it is a man who has in him a particular magic power and who knows the moves that it is advisable to make as the words that it is necessary to pronounce to bend to one’s will the god-or-demons or the soul/minds. People speak to him when the wants to get from them a particular and personal favor. The druid embodies the whole community in front of the altar of the god-or-demon and performs the rites which must get collective advantages to it.

In the beginning, the borders of the religious society and those of the civil society are identical. In the family, the natural priest , he is a father (even where the posterity is recognized only in maternal line), the worship which he celebrates at home is usually, but not always, an ancestral worship; in the clan or the tribe, it is the chief; for the nation, it is the king or the supreme magistrate. When the social life becomes more complex and the task of the sovereign heavier or more difficult, he usually delegates his powers to a priest or a college of priests but almost there are always certain sacrifices that he only has the duty to achieve. Even in very barbarian societies, bordering almost the savagery, there are priests. It is that the rites are very complicated, very meticulous, and that they require, to be

celebrated as it is appropriate, a long training to which the chiefs could not agree; it is sometimes also that they require that the officiating person is surrounded, as a protective barrier, of a whole web of legal prohibitions, which would put a war leader in the inability to do his duties. Case of the vergobretus among the Eduans besides.

It is advisable to add that in all these ceremonies, the old men, the elders of the tribe, and the chief especially, have an important place and play a crucial role.

Nevertheless, with the constitution of priesthood , the separation of the civil society and of the religious society begins, which the training of these magic or mystical brotherhoods accentuates; whose members are joined together , either by natural family ties or obedience to the same chief and the inhabiting the same territory, but by the participation in the same divine mysteries, the adhesion to the same ceremonial rules.

THIRD LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER AREMI.

………..The origin of druidism is, of course, to be sought on the side of the Indo-European religion of the Celtic invaders, having swarmed little by little in Europe starting from the 9th century before our era; but this primordial druidic religion very quickly evolved in contact with the overcome and subjected populations: the atectai (dhimmi our Muslim brothers say).

A constant of druidiaction supported these changes besides: its tendency to universalism, which appears through an extraordinary power of absorption of the most various concepts.

As of the earlier time indeed, we can note that the major divinities already seem as syntheses of different god-or-demons; some common features having led to equate in fact the ones to the others, several characters.

The junction of the various traditions is explained easily here by the aptitude that has each druidic deity to take multiple shapes to which the variety of the names corresponds.

The god-or-demons inherited from the trifunctional Indo-European system have met, on their coming in the West, the local deities (civilization of Vintsha Serbia). Rather than to reject them and to prohibit their worship , the druidicists adopted them by making them absorbed by their own god-or-demons, thus giving birth to divine figures bearing new characteristics; who sometimes radically drew them aside from those which were generally allocated to the traditional Indo-European god-or-demons ,of whom they still have the name.

The process was ratified by the high-knowers, and it was current that such or such particular divine form is identified with one of the great god-or-demons of the Indo-European pantheon or Pleroma but regarded as the preferential aspect under which a certain number of people paid homage to him.

Thus were organized the worships that we could call local or of patronage. These groups were characterized by the worship celebrated , if not exclusively, at least with a very marked preference, in the honor of such or such deity considered as a manifestation of one of the great god-or-demons of the (of Indo-European origin) primitive Celtic pantheon or pleroma.

Once again let us repeat it, it never existed ONE druidism but SOME druidisms, different Schools of thought, as close or as different between them as Catholics, Reformists or Orthodox are, inside the Christian framework; or Shiites and Sunni inside the Moslem framework, or Vaishnavites and Shaivites inside the Hindu framework.

The theological contents that the word druidism “ covers” is therefore more a general attitude that a precise agreement on particular dogmas.

We find perhaps everywhere widespread the belief in the immortality of the soul/mind, in connection with the belief in the immortality of the universe; just like the idea that the human soul (anamone) is only a piece or spark of a universal soul, the Awenyddio (a huge psychic reservoir) but what characterizes especially this druidiaction it is its more or less marked tendency to highlight a higher divine Person. Sometimes subordinated to the impersonal Principle of Fate, sometimes superimposed (Romano-British tendency).

The druidism is not resulting from an alleged revelation made to mankind with a lot of fuss style Jericho trumpets, but called upon reason and reflection. It also favors the experience of each one. The life is a fact, and the true druidism takes this life such as it is for the majority of men; its message is by no means esoteric (Oh well sorry for Toland, for once!) And it speaks to all good will men, because, as Arrian said so well: “Hheaven helps those who help themselves. This Celtic law I follow with my fellows, because I declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods (Arrian. Hunting. XXXV 1).

The first aspect of this knowledge deals with the origins of the material world and mankind; the second aspect relates to the destiny of Mankind ( Gdonios) and Cosmos (Bitus), the nature of the soul (anamone), its situation, its destiny, its return in the Big Whole (its return to the primeval fire); thanks to the practice of ways which will force its blossoming.

The goal of any self-respecting druidism is therefore to propose one or more paths suitable to make it possible to the anamone or individual soul, to come back in order to be molten in the Big Whole.

There exist three possibilities for that.

Everyone knows the normal path which is that of death. But to be again embodied in another parallel world of heavenly nature, forms only a (pleasant, it is true) stage, in this process.

There exist others. That of the semnotheos about which Plutarch speaks to us for example, but in ih the past tense.

“…He said that among the islands lying near [Great] Britain were many isolated, having few or no inhabitants. Some of which bore the names of deities or heroes. He himself, by the emperor's order, had made a voyage for inquiry and observation to the nearest of these islands which had only a few inhabitants, holy men who were all held inviolate by the [Great] British. Shortly after his arrival there occurred a great tumult in the air, and many portents; violent winds suddenly swept down and lightning flashes darted to earth. When these abated, the people of the island said that the passing of someone of the mightier soul/minds had befallen. "For," said they, "as a lamp when it is being lighted has no terrors, but when it goes out is distressing to many, so the great souls/minds [Greek megalai psychai] have a kindling into life that is gentle and inoffensive, but their passing and dissolution often, as at the present moment, fosters tempests and storms, and often infects the air with pestilential properties." (Plutarch. On the failure, ceasing, or obsolescence of oracles. 29).

Editors’ Note. The expression “dissolution” is to be put between quotation marks. It was in fact, for these semnothei, after a certain number of more or less short stays in one of these other heavenly parallel worlds that the Indo-Buddhist druids call Sukhavati or Nirvana, to go this time to a higher stage, the return into the Big Whole which is called Parinirvana in the Far East.

SECOND LETTER OF THE DRUID AREMI.

Regarding the respect owed to ancestors

“Prepare your immortality , your death, you will form part of the forming worlds” (Henry Lizeray).

………….The ancestors are those who guarantee the human activities. For example, when you went to hunt or fish, you called upon ancestors. In the daily life, the Celt of this time was therefore always in relation with his ancestor. Man recognized that he had received life from them and this way of thus recognizing the ancestral heritage was a manner for him of admitting that something was beyond him that he was not his own origin.

The purpose of the worship of ancestors is to perpetuate an emotional complex as intense as possible, linking in an insoluble way the living and the dead of the same clan. It has as an aim the maintenance of the graves , but especially the worship of the memory which must be performed , in each residence, in front of the domestic altar. In the family, the worship of the died parents was generally taken on by sons, and particularly the oldest son. The daughters are authorized to deal with the altar of ancestors only if they do not have brothers.

All the dead do not become “ancestors” of course! As long as you remember still personally the face of this late, his physique, you cannot regard him as a “ancestor.” But in the fourth or fifth generation, those who did not know him, but to whom it was spoken about the values that he embodied, will be able to begin dedicating a true worship to him. The ancestor is, first of all, a very old late, since his descendants having known him also died, when the title of “ancestor” is given to him. The more the late one moves away from us, the more we let lose the memory of him, and the more he becomes ancestor, while approaching then the divinity. Aren't the ancestors those who become similar to the god-or-demons according to the Greek philosopher Euhemerus?

………….According to a rather universal principle, the authority also grows with age. So ancestors, with the eponym ancestor or the founding people ancestor leading them; occupy a rank higher than that of the oldest of their alive descendants, but lower than the god-or-demons; and especially than the higher or creating God or Demiurge, ancient by definition.

Following the example of the alive elders, they advise theirs (by the means of dreams), take care of their wellbeing, carry out the fruitfulness of men, animals and fields, and take care of the strict respect of the traditional order by their descendants. They inform those who neglect them, through signs and mishaps, and hit the culprits with a disease or an accident; losses of property and even death.

The alive ones therefore have all interest, and even a vital one, to keep good relationships with them, particularly through the worship of ancestors. They speak to them with prayers and they regularly offer sacrificial gifts to them to feed them, but they are also expected in the great and small festivals celebrated within the family or the whole community, to commemorate their memory.

All the dead do not become “ancestors” we have said. In order to become a great ancestor, the dead must, first of all, have had, of course, an exemplary and respectable life. See on this subject the funeral praises like those of Urien, Cadwallon and Cynddylan in Wales, which are of a rare beauty and form to some extent true as effective as a prayer songs of death.

The bodily entirety is the second condition for this process (see the case of Noadatus/Nuada losing his throne with its arm). The bodily or mentally handicapped persons cannot become “ancestors.” In the same way are excluded from this process the people who did not find a good death or who died too young . Because it is not a question in this case of the individuals as such, but only of the values they embodied.

Through the worship performed to men or women of great human, spiritual and moral quality, the ancient Proto-Celtic society, somewhere in central Europe north of the Alps, gave itself or remembered values without which it could not survive quite simply: fruitfulness, longevity, health, strength, life, love for the homeland. This is why it rejected from this process, on the other hand, the people who, by accident or personal will, had not embodied these values.

By the means of the worship of ancestors, the Celts therefore believe in the dead, whereas the Old Testament itself, believes only in the Death. As in the majority of the traditional peoples, for the high-

knowers dead never really died. They underwent quite simply a transfer towards another world called “Vindobitus,” “Mag Meld,” etc., etc. And in the mind of the Celts, there is not quite clear separation between the world of the living and that of the dead.

There are, of course, several levels of ancestors!

Each founder of tribe, or ethnos group deserves that a true worship is performed for him, but there are also the ancestors of families or clans. All these ancestors are intermediaries or mediators between this world and the other.

The functions of mediation can be indeed carried by these late closer to the god-or-demons and therefore close to the higher divinity. And they put us thus in touch with the Divinity, since they are closer to it than us. But even through the soul/minds of ancestors, it is in reality nevertheless still the nameless God-or-Demon who acts.

FOURTH LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

……..The primitive meta-history of the Celts was always a succession of wars and peace with the god-or-demons. Some god-or-demons who, however, always forgave or renewed their forgiveness (or at least who always acted as if nothing happened , who always wiped the state clean), whereas Celts themselves multiplied ALSO rude remarks towards them. At least, it is what Cicero thought apparently.

“For other nations undertake wars in defense of their religious feelings; they wage war against the religion of every people; other nations when waging war beg for sanction and pardon from the immortal gods; they have waged war with the immortal gods themselves” (Pro M. Fonteio. XIII-XIV, 30-31).

Cicero was perhaps racist, but he had nevertheless two very known Celtic friends, Diviciacus and Deiotarus, and we may wonder if he did not express quite simply here a largely widespread opinion about the Celts in Antiquity. We have to live with it! Such was the disastrous reputation of our spiritual ancestors. But on what therefore could it be founded, this reputation? We wonder it well.

! - ---- ---------------- --------------- ---------- --- !

“And one day hereafter […..] When the Titans of a later day shall rouse up against the Hellenes barbarian sword and the Celtic Ares, and from the furthest West rush on like snowflakes and in number as the stars when they flock most thickly in the sky […..] Then will be seen at the foot of the temple the ranks of the foe, beside my tripods the swords and cruel belts and hateful shields, which shall cause an evil journey to the foolish tribe of the Galatians (Callimachuus. Hymn to Delos).

“In the meantime, Brennus…..

Soon after, as if the spoils of mortals were too mean for him, he turned his thoughts to the temples of the immortal gods, saying, with a profane jest, that “the gods, being rich, ought to be liberal to men." He suddenly, therefore, directed his march towards Delphi, regarding plunder more than religion, and caring for gold more than for the wrath of the deities, " who," he said, " stood in no need of riches, as being accustomed rather , to bestow them on mortals."……Brennus, when he came within sight of the temple, deliberated for some time, whether he should at once make an attempt upon it, or should allow his soldiers, wearied with their march, a night to refresh themselves……Amidst this contest between the two, the priests of all the temples, as well as the priestesses themselves, with their hair loose, and with their decorations and fillets, rushed, trembling and frantic, into the front ranks of the combatants, exclaiming that " the god was come; that they had seen him leap down into his temple through the opening roof; that, while they were all humbly imploring aid of the deity, a youth of extraordinary beauty, far above that of mortals, and two armed virgins, coming from the neighboring temples of Diana and Minerva, met them; that they had not only perceived them with their eyes, but had also heard the sound of a bow and the rattling of arms’; and they therefore conjured them with the strongest entreaties, " not to delay, when the gods were leading them on, to spread slaughter among the enemy, and to share the victory with the powers of heaven." Incited by these exhortations, they all rushed eagerly to the field of battle, where they themselves also soon perceived the presence of the deity; for a part of the mountain, broken off by an earthquake, overwhelmed a host of the Galatians …” (Justin. Summary of the Philippic History by Trogue Pompey. Trogue Pompey who was Celt besides, a Celt of the type “collaborator” intellectual and servile towards the powerful ones, nevertheless).

In short, Abellio or Belin/Belen [Apollo in romana-graeca interpretatio], the belisama Brigit [Minerva in romana-graeca interpretatio] and X [Diana in romana-graeca interpretatio] came to help the Greeks by fighting themselves personally the Celts of Brennus because of his blasphemies.

But these god-or-demons, however, quickly had to forgive or to act as if nothing happened with our dear Celts, if it is not there quite simply a misunderstood myth, a little similar to that which will relate to the Fir Bolg many centuries later.

A tough legend indeed has it that the city of Delphi in Greece indeed was plundered or stripped from its treasure that the Volcae Tectosages would have brought in the South of current France (always called Gallia in Greek language besides). This legend is known under the name of Gold of Tolosa (aurum Tolosanum). It is an account whose status, historical or mythical, is not very well established.

This treasure would come from the plundering of the sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi, during the Great expedition of - 279.

Part of the Celtic people of the Volcae Tectosages (Tolosates) would have then brought it back to Tolosa. It is this gold (approximately 70 tons), cursed because of its sacrilege source, that the Roman proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio would have seized in 105 before our era, to bring it back to Rome. During the transfer, part of the treasure disappears rather curiously and Caepio is thus accused of having stolen it. According to him, the convoy would have been unfortunately attacked by shameless brigands between Tolosa and Marseilles. As Caepio was also responsible for the defeat in Arausio (Orange - 105 before our era) where 80.000 Roman soldiers were killed; Rome did not support these two consecutive failures and Caepio was excluded from the Senate by the powerful orator Gaius Norbanus: his Roman citizenship was withdrawn from him and he had to pay a fine of 15.000 talents. This disfavor marked the minds so much that people made it a legend according to which the Gold of Tolosa brought bad luck.

Mere fabrication or historical truth, nobody knows today what this treasure became. However, immense quantities of gold were indeed found in the sacred lakes of the district of the Busca or in the lake of the Old-Tolosa (8 km away).

But let us return to - 279. After the invasion of the east of Aetolia, the Celtic group sacks Kallion (Callium) before being expelled by the king of Macedon Antigonus II Gonatas. Brennus dies of his wounds received during fight while the survivors settle around the confluence of the Sava and of the Danube to give birth to the nation of the Scordisci.

A part of the army led by Leonorius and Lutorius having penetrated in Thracia, takes the direction of the Black Sea under the command of Commontorius. This group founds, in - 277, the kingdom of Tylis. A last contingent serves Nicomedes 1st, king of Bithynia, who establishes it in Anatolia. These warriors form a confederation of States directed by a military aristocracy: the Koinon Galaton. It is made up of three main peoples.

The Tectosages are located in the interior, their capital is Ancyra (today Ankara).

The Tolistobogians have the towns of Pessinus and Gordion.

The Trocmi have the towns of Tavion and Eccobriga.

According to Strabo, their tetrarchs and the 300 members of the council met in the Drunemeton, the great sanctuary where justice was done. Their economy is based on the breeding, but they have especially a reputation for being blasphemers. In the 4th century, St Jerome reports that they spoke still Celtic. In the 6th century , Cyril of Scythopolis in his life of Euthymius suggests that the language was still being spoken in his own day when he related a story that a monk from Galatia was temporarily possessed by Satan and unable to speak; when he recovered from the "possession,” he could respond to the questioning of others only in his native Galatian tongue. A good example of national or at the very least linguistic longevity (the great specialist in the question is the French Fernand Lequenne).

In short, here in any case what we can deduce from the Irish legends concerning the Fir Bolg and the other similar people. During their earthly life in Hyperborea, the god-or-demons therefore fought the Celts, but they ended up making peace with those among them who were good will; then they sealed this supernatural alliance by sending successively on earth to help them, the hesus Cuchulainn, then Belenus Barinthus Manannan. Belenus Barinthus Manannan who came to guide or save men as the great monarch who was Arthur. Or vice versa besides.

Whatever the taken on order, what we can say from the point of view of the high-knowers, it is that the man who believes in them like Buddhists believe in Amitabha, not only will not perish, but will get a place under the sun in the true world; because the Fate sent Belenus Barinthus Manannan or Hesus Cuchulainn in the world, not to judge the world of mankind; but so that, by the means of Arthur, this world of mankind is saved.

SECOND LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

THE “SAYINGS” OF THE PRIMORDIAL DRUID MAROVESUS OF THULE/FALIAS.

……………………………………………………………………..

Life is like the crossing of an Ocean.

Some people travel easily on broad and comfortable vessels,

Others have a hard time on a simple boat.

But the Sea, always, even raging, proves to be splendid,

It is given undivided to whom wishes it really…

The druidism, unlike the philosophy of the Eleatic School (Parmenides) or the Buddhism, comes down neither to the statement, nor to the negation, about the things of this world, but recognizes them as relative. The druidism therefore stands between two extreme opinions; that which affirms that the phenomena we witness or experiment also sometimes, exist really, in an objective and independent way, as such; and that which wants to see in them only dreams or illusions. It does not establish an assertion or negation system, but is engaged in a dissolving criticism of illusions (those of the Judeo-Islamic-Christianity for example). This illusory knowledge resulting from various beliefs is only effects from human ignorance: the phenomenal appearances, above the absolute immanent truth. But this relativity of things is neither the nothingness nor the unreality of the appearances themselves.

Because the very thesis of the absolute vacuum is also placed under this criticism. There is some knowable one, even if it is not an external object, and, in the absence of external reality, the support of the knowable is the inner psychism, built by the accumulation of the effects felt in the human awareness (menman).

In fact, in this tangible world, there is not an objective (synonymous with reality) “Truth,” but some “ truths, each one having to find his, resulting from his personal path of life.

Thus, each truth is not necessarily erroneous, but remains subjective, partial, linked to the mindset and to the person who perceives it. Only the “Divinity” can, by intrinsic interdependence with Mankind, half-open the door…

“Truth” is incomprehensible for us without the help of this assistance, because there is between it and us an immeasurable gap.

It is difficult to have a complete coherent idea, of the Man, of the men, of their advance and of what towards what they move, without carrying out long research, often difficult; without causing or living dangerous experiments.

It is the work of a whole life, in search of the “Truth,” between Darkness and Light… It happens, sometimes, when you are ready, that an invisible chance reveals what you had before you, but that you did not see! And it is “always” a moving moment that the moment of this discovery of your personal Grail…

………Hesus Setanta connects the world of the god-or-demons and of human beings, the eternal world , the celestial world and the temporal world (the tangible world), the earthly world, the land on which man walks, eats, lives and dies. It is besides what his name means which comes from the stem Sentu = way.

It is also illustrated by the myth of the change into an eagle of his father Lug , called Llew Llaw Gyffes in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (Math son of Mathonwy).

The druidic myth (not to be mixed up with the Celtic myth, the relativity of the time passing is for example illustrated by the story having produced the Irish legend of Bran son of Febal) is a figuration in which the forces of Nature (in their deployment starting from the Origin of the Manifestation) , take place. The druidic myth tells the expression of the aiu, in other words, of the eternity, in time.

Of course, the problem the druidic mythology poses to us, it is that it is placed especially on the level of images and that, like the Bible, its language is specific to a given civilization. The philosopher

himself would prefer, to hear the language of the reason more than that of the myth. But can intelligence, by the only way of the speculation, to understand the relationship of aiu i.e., of eternity, to time?

In a very old text of the Rig Veda dealing with the true monotheism (the true monotheism and not the Judeo-Christian or Muslim monolatry), it is said that in the beginning, the single and undifferentiated Being God or Demiurge, contained everything in indistinctness. The One was alone and the Manifestation was folded up in it, time sleeping in the aiu (in the eternity).

It is in the druidic mythology that this reflection about monism was led as far it was possible. Ultimate Reality is the cosmic cauldron of the Big Whole, symbolized by the Grail in the Middle Ages, this Including contains at the same time a not changing, eternal, aspect, of the Being ; but also the power of the change of the Becoming. The cosmic cauldron is at the same time static and dynamic. It is what makes it elusive for our intellect. And it is neither female nor male, it is non-dual.

FIRST LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

REGARDING THE GREAT HESUS MASTER OF THULE,

HIS DIVINE FILIATION, HIS REDEEMING MISSION.

……………The higher god-or-demon of the high-knowers is immanent-transcendent, unknowable, immensely good, and from him the souls and the gods emanate. There exist nevertheless other beings intermediate between the men and this higher Being. The great Hesus of Falias/Thule embodied in a half-god-or-demon, is one of them.

Of what Hesus is the name? Hesus is the very example of the blossoming and of the salvation of the soul (the light of the hero or lon laith,en blaith, long gaile, which emerged then from his forehead), and his name can therefore be called upon by each one, because he belongs to the men through his triple birth in this world at the time of his last avatara. To pronounce his name at the crucial moment is, of course, at least to consider he could exist and it could not be more effective invocation. The nembutsu of Amidism is far behind.

As Patrick Pearse saw it very well while founding his School in Saint-Enda, and Augusta Gregory, in his whole life the great Hesus showed himself as our model. He is the perfect man (the “Ro-viros.” Rofir in Gaelic language) who invites us to follow him in his hyperborean island of Thule, at the same time exit and entrance of the Next World.

There is undoubtedly in the beginning a character having really existed, somewhere in Central Europe, 3 000 years ago, but a little like in the case of the Greek Hercules dear to Euhemerus, to the strictly historical biography of this great hero having really existed, all more mythical the ones than the other elements were quickly added ; and the human armies, quite human, against whom he really fought, a little like Rolland at Roncevaux were little by little presented by the poets (having mythologized ad infinitum his heroic epic); in the same way that of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns (Andernas on the Continent, Irish Fomore). In the epic texts indeed, the hosts from Ireland fighting against Cuchulainn have a role similar to those of the armies of gigantic anguipedic wyverns known as Andernas or Fomorians, in war against the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, if this word is preferred, Danu (bia). N.B. What is certain also indeed, it is that the Setanta called Hound of Culann in no way feels Irish. He spends indeed his time fighting them and never regards himself as one of them.

Etymologically, Hesus, Aisus, Aesus, Esus, comes from the Celtic prefix Veso the meaning of which is “excellent, good, better.” Cf also perhaps Latin Erus/Herus lord master sovereign.

His other name will be Setanta, which means the walking one. He will take the name of Cuchulainn, which means “the dog of Culann,” only after having killed a gigantic watchdog belonging to a blacksmith named Culann.

A first aspect of this god-or-demon or half-god-or-demon, is that of “hanged” (in arbore suspenditur) shaman. At the height of the shamanistic experiment indeed, he is hanged by his feet in a forked tree, and remains there to beyond his bodily death: it is “the Tree with hanged man” evoked in the review of Celtic Studies. Whence his association with the idea of “resurrection” in the form of an eagle. Mystic or real according to the Schools. N.B. This myth is found in the fourth branch of the mabinogi and applied to Llew Llaw Gyffes.

He will be seen then primarily as a warlike deity, whence his bringing together with Mars in the Roman interpretation.

Combined animal: the bull. Associated plant: the mistletoe.

THE LIBERATING HESUS.

As of the beginning, the former high-knowers linked the topic of the salvation of souls with that of the freedom with respect to the contingencies of this world. Some, by following his example and his teaching, became even what we call today some awenyddion, like his foster brother called Cunovalos Cernacos (Conall Cernach said it in the Irish tradition):

“The sacrifice operated on the standing stone in Moritamna (Muirthemne)

Granted to us altogether the sovereignty of this hero.”

In other words, like in the case of the Buddha named Amitabha 1), the virtues of the large walking dog, Hesus/Setanta/Cuchulainn, flash back on us. But in the case of the hesus Cuchulainn, it is a Buddha rather man of action.

In their oral commentaries of the scenes of the temptation of Hesus as Cuchulainn (everything seems to join forces indeed to try to prevent him from leaving and do his duty, the Grey of Macha, his favorite horse, his faithful charioteer, the Morrigane herself , and so on); the old high-knower of bard or velede type explained that, by his resistance to the temptation of fleeing his destiny negatively; Cuchulainn in a way destroyed in us the effects of the strange disease which periodically paralyzed his and which came from the Epona named Magosia (Macha in Gaelic language). To voluntarily accept one’s destiny it is that the true freedom and this triumphing freedom , through its very sovereignty, cancels the original curse of this Epona (of Magosia/Macha) which affects the best men.

THE DEIFYING HESUS.

Thanks to the salutary example of this in the flesh Hesus, we were initiated with the superhuman. Or more exactly we keep from now on in mind than it is possible to find again the preternatural powers of the human being.

Such is the reason why the higher Being is communicated itself in this hypostasis. It is so that the Man, by following the tracks of the great Hesus, becomes in a way his ultimate heir, because it is by following the walking one it that people find the path.

Preternatural is a word coming from the medieval Latin praeter naturalis, meaning beyond nature, from praeter beyond and natura, natural. The preternatural phenomena are between the natural order and the supernatural one which belong only to angels or demons.

Is regarded as supernatural in a stricter sense of the word what is of specifically divine nature exclusively and, consequently, exceeds all the normal possibilities in this world. The supernatural exceeding human nature, the normal knowledge of the supernatural escapes the reason. The supernatural itself appears in a way inaccessible to the reason in its explicit and positive contents; non-producible by the natural forces, it appears thereby as absolutely transcendent to reason and nature.

The preternatural, on the other hand, designates, as regards mankind, the performances or acts higher than every human capacity, than we can realize in the order of nature on the condition of receiving the assistance of a higher entity, but which do not pertain truly to the supernatural order. The supernatural can only come from a divine intervention, such miracles. The wonders, on the other hand, come under the preternatural. The preternatural shows the existence of beings infinitely more powerful than the man. For example, the bilocation and the other powers like vision or telepathy , clairvoyance (Lombroso and Pierre Janet). The immediate discovery and without examination of a disease and of the remedies which are peculiar to it. According to the Christians the first man had a gift including three privileges which, without changing basically his human nature, gave him a kind of perfection: innate knowledge, control of passions or exemption of concupiscence, suffering, and immortality (of the body).

The anmenacton or anuanacton (naming ceremony), par excellence ritual commemorative of this divine adoption; plunges us in the blood of the great Hesus so that, beheaded with him to die as regards the original weakness (the curse of the Epona called Magosia-Macha in Gaelic language) and in the endless reincarnation into bacuceos or seibaros; we will born again with him (at least partially) in the other divine world, in other words, into a new life symbolized through his apotheosis in a chariot. There we find again the role of Amitabha, but in a context clearly more turned towards action.

The word “preternatural” appears in the 19th century. Gougenot uses the word “superhuman.” In the 20th century, Pierre Delval calls it “the paraphysical surreal” and these last years certain authors like Bernard Auriol, readily uses instead the word “parapsychological,” or “metapsychic.”

HESUS POETIC JUSTICE OF THE FATE.

The word justice should not be reduced to the narrow meaning it has today. The Celtic word (fir) also includes the notion of truth. Hesus is the truth of the Fate (Tocade) and for this reason he was beheaded on the standing stone in Muirthemne. As the song by Guy Beart says it, the poet told the truth, he must be executed.

He was recognized as “roviros” (“rofir” in Irish language) i.e., as “Super Man” or “Complete Man,” that is to say having the preternatural gifts of mankind by Cunovalos Cernacos (Conall Cernach).

The example of Cuchulainn is the first and last force being appropriate to the poor mortals that we are. On the condition of believing in his existence obviously (only the faith saves, the faith can knock down mountains according to certain legends showing us high-knower like Mug Ruith making them collapse).

The interdependence with the Fate releases the Man of the servitudes by the congenital weakness of the best among us (symbolized by the disease of the Ulaid) and by the reincarnation in bacuceos or seibaros (in the event of half-reincarnation). Our truth remains based on this faith.

In this complicated play of interdependence but also of freedom, the co-operation of the Man to his salvation through heroization, remains an act of (subjective) freedom. The man agrees to salvation or refuses it.

The last born grandson of the Fate, and of the mopatis Epona (the theotokos), formerly assumed our nature (“a human body was around him,” to take over the very word of Flann Mainistreach in the Lebor na Gabala Erenn). In order to restore the lost similarity between men and god-or-demons.

And if it is not himself they are the veledae who worked out then spread his Golden Legend.

His miracles (his feats), his defense of ordinary and humble people as a dog of Culann (Compert Con Culainn : Am túalaing mo daltai. Am dín cech dochraite. Dogníu dochur cech tríuin, dogníu sochur cech lobair -Fergus- he slew nor drivers nor messengers nor folk without arms) his acceptance of the supreme sacrifice, his apotheosis and his ascension into heaven; form an outline of the other world, in other words, of the destiny of Mankind.

The salutary example of the sacrifice of the great Hesus, as Setanta Cuchulainn, shows us that the phase where the soul/minds began to exceed matter will go hand in hand with an intensification of the sufferings of Mankind but it has, through its force, redeeming value , and it therefore reconciles Man with his rival brothers, the god-or-demons, it joins Man with the world of the divinity. The Hesus in question is part of our history because he is intarabus or anextiomarus, in other words, a mediating power by definition.

The body of the great Hesus (Irish Morfessa) as Setanta Cuchulainn, was glorified (made bellissime) or transfigured as of his apotheosis, as the account of the “150 women” having seen him ascending into heaven in his siaburcharpart (in his chariot) proves it. See the habit of the chariot burial in Champagne or in Ardenne.

With Hesus the Fate was made flesh, the Hesus Setanta Cuchulainn, just like Deirdre besides, is in a way the very incarnation of the Tocad and Lug (his father of the hereafter ) is an emanation from the Fate sent towards his future mother to proceed to this astonishing work of the Holy Spirit that was his triple conception. Sualtam indeed was only his adoptive or feedingr father.

Our hero was also a powerful healer able to make miracles in this field. The ambivalent fairy Morrigan will even benefit from that to make herself cured by him (without his knowledge according to the text of the cattle raid of Cooley).

“Then came the Mara Rigu/Morrigu/Morgan Le Fay, daughter of Ernmas, from the sidh in the guise of an old woman and in Hesus Cuchulainn’s presence she milked a cow with three teats. The reason she came thus was to be healed by him, for no one whom the Hesus Cuchulainn had wounded ever recovered until he himself had aided in his cure. Maddened by thirst, the Hesus Cuchulainn asked her for milk. She gave him the milk of one teat.

May this be swiftly healed for me.

And the one eye of the queen which had been wounded was cured.

The Hesus Cuchulainn asked her for the milk of another teat. She gave it to him.

Swiftly may she be cured who gave it.

He asked for the third drink and she gave him the milk of the third teat.

Bendacht dee & andee fort, a ingen.The blessing of gods and non-gods ? be on you, woman.

Gods were the wizards (cumachta) and the non-gods the husbandmen (trebaire).Then the queen was physically made whole.

But our hero was not satisfied to achieve miracles or wonders of this kind during his short worldly existence. His primary qualities are indeed, courage, absence of hatred, of jealousy or fear, perfect honesty, frankness, and finally the love of the truth.

Certain leanings of the current neo-druidism minimize obviously the suffering of the god-or-demon Hesus = Cuchulainn on the standing stone in Murthemne, even regard it as concerning only appearances: a god-or-demon being in the impossibility to suffer as a man.

Because the Hellenic objection to this important druidic concept is obviously this one: how somebody who died in a way so stupidly human could be a god?

It is true that even for the contemporaries of the Hesus such a death had to seem the proof that he was not a god. As said it so well his more savage enemy, Queen Medb, “I n-óenchurp atá. Imgeib guin immoamgeib gabáil. He has only one body, he is wound prone and can be made prisoner.”

But authentic druidism can only reject such Docetism, which is comprehensible only in a Hellenistic background. The humanity of Hesus as Setanta = Cuchulainn - implying suffering and death - does not have to be eliminated, from his myth, his legend, his example.

Unlike what Lady Augusta Gregory thinks , the drama of the standing stone of Muirthemne takes all its meaning only if we also take into account the ascension into heaven of the Hesus = Cuchulainn in his chariot after his triumph over the hell. Because the “Siaburcharpat Conculainn” of the 12th century is categorical in this respect, the Hesus = Cuchulainn went down well into the ice of the hell, but he went out again from it… still alive, in a way or another. The Christian copyist monks, of course, ascribed this exploit to St. Patrick, but we find also the same thing in the story entitled Brislech Mor Maige Murthemni (The Great Defeat on the Plain of Muirthemne) Version A of the Book of Leinster.

“That week the Ulaid entered it not in triumph. But the soul/mind of the Diog of Culann appeared there to the thrice fifty queens who had loved him, they saw the dog of Culann floating in his phantom chariot over Emain Macha, and they heard him singing : Emain O Emain ! Powerful realm ! etc..”

1) Amitabha is unknown in the old Buddhism and we can think that his worship developed starting from an influence come from close Iran. His oldest statue identified by a dedication, dating back to the second half of the 2nd century (28th year of the reign of Huvishka), comes from Govindo-Nagar in the Kushan empire ; it is currently in the museum of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. His name (infinite light), his geographic origin and his notion of heaven, made think of a possible Persian influence.

SEVENTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE ARDENNE FOREST.

……….The notion of embodiment (avatar) differs from hypostasis in the sense that, in the case of the embodiment, and unlike hypostasis; it is not one of the components or one of the attributes of the god-or-demon which appears; but himself, completely or partially, with a precise aim ( to repair an injustice for example or to defend somebody: many examples in our Irish documentation: Lug for Cuchulainn, Aengus for Diarmuid and Grainne).

The more or less transitory partial embodiments come under the category of the deified heroes.

On a certain level, both series correspond nevertheless.

Many thought indeed, among former Irishmen, that divine characters, and heroes belonging to the clan of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), or to the people in the Sidh, even certain great men, could to be embodied , or to be again embodied ; i.e., to go down or go down again on earth, and to live gain here below a life of mere mortals. This largely spread idea was highlighted by Alfred Nutt and Eleanor Hull.

God-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer, of love, defensive) war, health… are hypostases of the higher divine level. The Hesus/Cuchulainn or the son of Camulos called Vindos (Finn in Ireland) are partial incarnations of certain god-or-demons. Manannan himself is perhaps only the avatar of a Pan Celtic god or demon of the type Belenus or Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

Eleanor Hull, in her remarks about the Irish taboos and gessa, in connection with the saga of Cuchulain; think that the principal characters of these legends were considered as descendants, or more exactly avatars , or reincarnations, of the former god-or-demons.

Their genealogies make them go back to members of the clan of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this word is preferred, Danu (bia), but there are also anecdotes about their birth showing they are regarded as divine beings, born again in the world of mankind. These stories are not always very clear and it proves to be obvious that the majority of these accounts were rewritten by Christian transcribers, because these [relating to avatars] doctrines were, of course, hardly acceptable for them. The Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Etain, symbol of the human soul, becomes in them for example the human wife, of a king in Ireland…

Duxtir/Dechtire, the mother of Cuchulainn, was the daughter of the high-knower Catubatuos and the sister of the king Conchobar. It is spoken about Conchobar as he was a superhuman being and Duxtir/Dechtire, his sister, mother of Cuchulainn, is known as “goddess.” See the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, 101b; as well as the book of Leinster, 123b: “Cúchulainn mo dea dechtiri.”

With regard to Cúchulainn himself, it is recorded that he is the avatar of Lug lamhfada. Lug appears to Duxtir/Dechtire, the mother of Cúchulainn, and informs her that he will be her child, i.e., the child will be another incarnation of himself. When Cúchulainn is questioned about his origins, he will assert this filiation besides. And when it is a question of finding a wife to him, the reason put forward for that will be that Cuchulain can be born again only from himself, what quite a strange expression is, let us admit it .

D’Arbois de Jubainville also showed that the grandfather of Cuchulainn, was of the Sidhe, and that such was also the case of Ethne Inguba, the sister of Sualtam, his adoptive father.

The lineage of our hero is therefore at the same time royal and divine.

And Conall Cernach too, the companion avenger of Cuchulainn, according to the Cóir Anmann (a dictionary probably made up in the twelfth century), was himself, the reincarnation of a hero of the clan of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia).

The problem is that almost all the manuscripts dealing with the ancient literature or mythology of the Gaels were compiled by Christian copyist monks; what had as a result, as understood it well Eleanor Hull, that only some stories of misadventures arrived to us, and in an obviously faded form; whereas in the beginning, they were to be as numerous as in the Hinduism.

The other cases proposed by Eleanor Hull are those of King Mongan, that of the unfortunate , Arthur; and finally the famous companion of Finn hero of the love story which stages with the beautiful Grannia or Grainne: Diarmuid. See the account entitled “the pursuit of the Gilla Decair.” It is indeed reminded to him, in this account, that it was raised in the next world with Manannan Mac Lir and Oengus.

In this Irish design of the notion of avatar, there is no change of gender. Lug is embodied as a man, Cuchulainn, Finn as Mongan, Etain as a girl. But the latter seems not to remember having lived before in the world of the god-or-demons whereas Cuchulainn and Mongan themselves are clearly aware of it.

Editor’s note: with regard to Tuan mac Cairill also known as the son of Starn, it is rather some metamorphoses. Archetypal dream or nightmare, metamorphosis forms, beyond the real phenomenon, a universal myth which nourishes the religions, obsesses arts, and fascinates sciences. In the image of what it designates, the notion of metamorphosis is elusive. Permanent and universal; the metamorphosis escapes, if not to every definition - a “shape change,” according to the etymology (from the Greek meta-: “following,” whence “change,” and morphe: “shape”) - at least to any delimitation. The seed changes into a flower, the egg fertilized into a living being, the roller into sand, the young person into an adult, the night into day, the life into death, and so on ad infinitum.

The metamorphosis myth (a fabulous account generally opposing men and god-or-demons) is initially an etiological (from the Greek aitia, “causes”) myth: it has as a function to explain the world, to give it a sense . So, behind such plant, such stone, such island or such river, there would be the transformation of a deity. Reassuring, benevolent, the metamorphosis is used here to reabsorb the strangeness.

By assigning to the things a human or divine source, man rebuilds the world in his image, and, consequently, gives himself the possibility of acting on it. If the animals, the plants, the natural phenomena, which threaten me or on which I depend, are transformed men or god-or-demons; I can then speak to them, for example by the means of a wizard, a priest or a shaman, so that they grant me their favors, or to at least they spare to me their fury me. The etiological metamorphosis myths therefore favor vital elements for the societies in which they have risen. Fire (in all the peoples), food ( the coming of the corn among Indians), nature (whale, bear or seal among Inuit), and so on.

But, of course, it is of his own origin that man, from time immemorial, has been most curious, most anxious. Innumerable therefore are the myths which relate the creation of mankind (of all the men or, more often, of the founder of the people, of the tribe) to a metamorphosis.

The metamorphosis myth reassures in another capacity : by relating to a known origin this apparently incomprehensible world, it also confers to it the unity which seemed to be lacking. Because, if god-or-demons and men can become animals, plants, minerals; if even, from the one to the other of these kingdoms, from the one to the other of these species, passages are possible; it is well that the Bitus or universe is homogeneous and coherent. The metamorphosis myth proclaims indirectly the unity of the Big Whole.

This is why we find it working as well in the syncretic religions (combining several types of beliefs, from the God or Demiurge one to the soul/minds) like animism or pantheism - for which the deified nature, is populated by souls, spirits -; as in the materialists designs of a Lucretius. All the beings move one in another, consequently […] all is in perpetual flow […] every animal is more or less man *; every mineral is more or less plant; every plant is more or less animal. In this world of correspondences where the melting of mankind and nature is carried out, deified or not, metamorphosis is by no means a scandal, an anomaly or a miracle, but the very demonstration of the universal harmony. It is a change showing an order, a permanency, a continuity of which, when we think out well about it, the Darwinian evolutionism is not so distant. It is in any case much nearer than the simplistic creationism of the Judeo-Islamic-Christian.

*And reciprocally, every man can behave as an animal, not need to observe the mad men of the Islamic caliphate in Syria to come to this conclusion, the reading of the island of Dr. Moreau is enough.

THIRD LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER JEAN MARTIN.

…………“Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night.” (Strabo, Geography III, 4,16). A nameless god… Same intellectual reflex that with the El Elyon of the Jewish Torah we have noticed.

The druidism is naturally cantamantaloedis. This spirit of tolerance and good will to understand and appreciate the point of view of the others is based on the acceptance of the undeniable fact that a truth has always several faces, levels, or appearance. This point besides involves the need for knowing, and relatively well, the other religions in the world, in order to be able at least to discuss it, calmly and inch by inch. See the case of the high-knower met by Lucian in Marseilles.

Quite strange obviously are the powers from which seem to benefit certain heroes, gods or high-knowers, like Merlin of the Irish or Welsh legends.

Is the man able to visit god-or-demons? We know that this exists, but we are in the field of the preternatural. Astral travel, splitting into two, bilocation, gift of being everywhere at once ???

We also speak much about the light of heroes or lon laith en blaith lon gaile being able to leave the skull of certain warriors. These lon laith are perhaps perceptible only by purified or sharpened human psyches. In the druidism, more you are ascetic and trained , more things are perceived…

We may define the metapsychic as something which escapes the usual rules of perception or science. What is beyond the standard, of the scientific reasoning. That includes very varied phenomena. This field is a truly nebulous thing!

There are three categories of powers.

Preternatural (what exceeds the human capacities, what exceeds the forces of nature).

Natural (what belongs to the human capacities).

And finally supernatural (what comes from the higher Being or from the Big Whole).

Nobody can know the future, whatever the method. We can guess, have an intuition, but to predict is out of mankind’s reach.

When clairvoyants claim to be able to read the future in various supports, they can only anticipate foreseeable, i.e., accessible to a deduction, a reasoning, things .

The true druidic horoscopes for example and we do not speak here about the hare-brained ideas from the pseudo-zodiac of trees, are only an embryo of pre-scientific characterology, before Heymans or Le Senne and his triad emotivity, activity, speed of reaction, a way of transmitting a certain wisdom, but they never predict really the future in a stricter sense of the word. The Celtic zodiac is a poetic way to evoke certain types of character. A symbolic manner to speak about characterology.

All the scientists agree to say that Man uses only a very little portion of his brain. Certain faculties, known as metapsychic, as telepathy, magnetism or telekinesis, can be intrinsic to the human being, even if the latter does not control yet all the scientific approach of it. They are residual traces of the primeval and preternatural harmony between Mankind and nature, what we call informally the sixth sense.

Other phenomena bring us to the borders of the supernatural. Let us take the example of the near-death experiences (N.D.E.) where an individual, in the coma consequently to an accident; feels the impression to leave one’s body, to go into a black tunnel, while going towards a higher entity; but which has neither name, nor face, a kind of impersonal energy, and to see close died, relations before returning to wakefulness. This phenomenon appears in the study of the psychic (or extrasensory) properties of our body. But it is not always thus. It is well there all the difficulty of the discernment to do.

The psychic capacity, present in certain individuals, to feel things or to have a remote action on the things, without the intervention of spiritual entities, utilizes by no means the god-or-demons.

On the other hand, for all that makes higher spiritual entities intervene, there is always presence of god-or-demons, which can be either beneficial or ambivalent.

Certain paranormal phenomena fall under the supernatural, but not the absolute supernatural, the very relative supernatural. What we also call besides the preternatural. These phenomena are beyond the current human capacities: they make, what the god-or-demons share in this case, intervene, a power

over the matter or spirits,invisible therefore unperceivable for the common run of people. Perceptible in its effects, but not in its causes.

Can dead communicate with us?

For former druids, the soul/minds of the dead are, of course, closer to the god-or-demons than us. But why ask from supposed wandering souls or minds of our ancestors some lights which we can get elsewhere? If it is to be reassured about the hereafter death, it is better to favor confidence in our teaching about the parallel to ours world, that we call Mag Meld, Vindomagus, Vindobitus, or differently according to circumstances. To live his life honestly and to carry out in the better way than we can our difficult trade of man on this Earth is the good method.

When you call upon the soul/minds of the dead, you can also come into contact, I repeat it, with ambivalent deities who replace our dead and interfere then in our psyche. We never know whom we make come. The man is fragile and he can open his doors to spiritual entities who will enter his life, his body or his psyche, until alienating him.

Can certain persons see the invisible one? Such perceptions can occur indeed thanks to links created between certain sensitive people and higher entities.

A seibaros or phantom is a residual energy left by somebody having been in a crisis situation in a given place, and which appears under certain conditions to other people.

There exists in our sodality high-knowers who refuse to consider these phenomena! They say simply, “do not touch it! ”Such a recommendation is not likely to really help the women or the men of our time to live.

.......... HOW THEN DID THE FORMER DRUIDS SEE THE THINGS? Well, like this.

The characteristic of the beneficial (anextiomaroi, ivantucaroi, virotoutis,dunatis, toutatis, contrebis) god-or-demons is to intervene only in order to lead mankind towards truth, respect or friendship. Of course not to confer to certain men a power of domination over the others or a capacity to predict.

A recollection can therefore have as origin a beneficial god-or-demon. Certain phenomena of telepathy can originate in a beneficial god-or-demon. Example; I have no reason to think of my grandmother at such time and, suddenly, whereas I do another thing, I think of her. That can be due to the intervention of a matra sulevia or of a genius cucullatus. The matra sulevia or the genius cucullatus is a spiritual being which takes care of the individual soul/minds. It is their favored mode of action.

In the absence of exclusively beneficial god-or-demons, they are necessarily more ambivalent god-or-demons who intervene like in the case of the Muslim jinns. So, when spiritual entities are called upon, you never know with whom you make a pact…

What gives concretely this pact with the Celtic “jinns?” That can be some capacities of knowledge, some revelations of hidden things, concerning the past or the near future, some extraordinary powers.

While utilizing higher entities like the god-or-demons, then you can get from them a certain knowledge of foreseeable things, because they have a more piercing than ours sight. But that is limited to a near future. Good or bad, the god-or-demons do not know the future differently by other means that insofar it is made possible by the Fate or Tocade (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, destiny, toicthech “fortunatus,” tonquedec in Breton language. The labarum is its sign).

CONCLUSION.

It is easier for the man to deny what escapes to him than to acknowledge its incapacity to study it. To have such an approach of these phenomena can lead until their pure and simple negation.

Prudence to which true high-knowers invite obliges to give elements of understanding to prevent that one or the others do not fall into dangerous situations, to even help them to leave there. We are thus obliged to interest us in it to help our contemporaries.

First council: we have indeed a capacity on our life, that of returning more beautiful, just, and that to fit in the company to make good with the others. The research of the capacities on others, subjacent with the temptation of the paranormal, is a drift. This need for domination on the others or the universe is an escape ahead. It is initially necessary to seek what is constructive for oneself and for the others.

Second council: this kind of research is always very ambiguous. The high-knowers know that the preternatural or the supernatural one exists, that the Destiny exists, and that the man advances in his life towards a hereafter made of joy and of light called Vindomagos or Vindobitos but they also know that such research is dangerous. The temptation of extraordinary tears us off our true life.

SEVENTH LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

……………..“To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know” (Lucan, Civil war, I, 448-450).

Metapsychics (parapsychology in the Western countries, psychotronics in the Eastern countries psilogy in Canada) is the scientific discipline which studies various phenomena related to the human and animal behavior.

Under the label “modified or altered , states, of consciousness, specialists gather a certain number of experiments during which the subject feels that the usual functioning of his awareness is put out of order; and that he lives another relation with the world, himself, his body, his identity.

Although, historically, very many typologies were proposed, we can say that currently, the phenomena studied by metapsychics are divided into two main categories: extrasensory perceptions and psychokinesis.

Extrasensory perceptions. This word designates the knowledge which can be acquired apart from the usual sensory contacts.

Telepathy: direct communication from psyche to psyche or “ exchange of thoughts .”

Clairrvoyance: direct awareness of an event, an object… apart from the usual sensory contacts. Various phenomena can refer to clairvoyance…

- Psychometry: clairvoyance carried out with the support of an object (example a watch having belonged to somebody).

- Autoscopy: visualization/clairvoyance of the interior of one’s own body.

- Remote viewing : clairvoyance of a distant place (the subject can describe the place as if he was there).

- Rhabdomancy: awareness of events or objects with the assistance of a pendulum or of a divining rod (discovery of water, or of missing people). The rhabdomancy can take place either on the research place , or on a map.

- Xenoglossy: fact of being able to speak (or understand) a language without to have learned it.

- And, of course, all others “-mancies,” i.e., clairvoyance carried out using various supports (crystal ball, maps, or others).

-Precognition/retrocognition. Knowledge of events, places, objects… in the future (precognition) or the past (retrocognition). Precognition is, of course, the phenomenon which seems to defy more our common sense, since the events did not occur yet at the time when the subject takes note of it.

-Psychokinesis. Psychokinesis or telekinesis: direct action of the psyche on the matter, without contact, without detectable physical mean.

- Macro-PK: psychokinesis producing observable effects directly to the naked eye (metal bending , displacements of objects…).

- Micro-PK: psychokinesis on atomic particles (for example in Random Event Generators) or on systems in evolution, and producing effects perceptible only by a statistical analysis which shows that the random events no longer conformed exactly to random. Note: the experiments of rolls of dice straddle the two categories (macro/micro).

- Bio-PK: psychokinesis on the living matter (sick organs, bacteria, plants, animal or vegetable cells, etc.). Paranormal cures.

- Poltergeist: phenomenon appearing spontaneously and recurrently among the relatives of a person: unexplainable noises, displacements or breaking of objects, stone rain, raps, etc.

- Ectoplasmy: materialization of a substance coming from the body of a subject, and being able to take various shapes: total or partial human body, objects or animals…

- Psycho-photography: printing of a photo film by the psyche.

Other phenomena

Extrasensory perception and psychokinesis are the most studied categories. However, much of other phenomena can also form part of the corpus. The majority can be explained in terms of extrasensory perception or psychokinesis although these interpretations sometimes require complex intellectual constructions. You should not lose sight of the fact that the specified categories are only grids of analysis established by convenience. Some of the following phenomena were interpreted during History, either in a religious context, or as indication of the survival of the soul/mind.

- Apparitions: perception of people, animals, entities or objects… in a given place, whereas their presence in this place is impossible. Example: appearance of the Virgin Mary, people deceased (“ghosts”), luminous balls…

- Haunting: phenomena related to a place (often castles or old houses) where apparitions of ghosts and often phenomena of extrasensory perception or psychokinesis occur.

- Mediumnity: apparent “possession” of a medium-subject by a “spirit,” levitation of tables, raps, paranormal getting of information, receipt of messages through “automatic writing,” etc. (regarded as coming from disembodied spirits).

- ITC (Instrumental Transcommunication): recording on audio/video/photo supports, etc. of paranormal images, messages, or noises, ascribed by the practitioners to spirits of late.

- Levitation: raising of heavy objects or of the human body (often among mystics).

- Psychosomatic anomalies: ordeals as in the cases reported in Ireland (see some, some but not all, of the 12 ordeals recorded in the story entitled Echtra Cormaic i Tír Tairngire), fakirism, firewalking, stigmata appearance (paranormal appearance of marks on the body), inedia (survival without food), thanatosis (preservation of the bodies after death), myroblytism and myrrh-gusher saints, etc.: phenomena in which the physiological limits of the human body seem extended .

- Experience of exit out of the body: state of consciousness in which the subject feels that is awareness is separated from his physical body that he can distantly observe. During this experiment, there can be paranormal acquisition of information.

- Near-Death Experience : experiment occurring primarily in a state of “apparent death,” in which the subject feels various feelings (passage in a tunnel, attraction towards a light, etc.) and producing lasting psychological modifications.

- Hypnosis (called before “sleepwalking”): state of very great suggestibility, where various phenomena can occur (auto/hetero-scopy, clairvoyance, hyperesthesias, anesthesias…)

- Synchronicity: time coincidences of two or several, physical or psychic, events, which are not linked causally, but by their sense.

- Divinations (by Lepontic runes, tarot, astrology, etc., etc.) founded on relations of synchronicity.

Definitions suggested by the International Metapsychic Institute (IMI).Founded in 1919, the Institute was one of the first organizations in the world studying these psi phenomena with an at the same time rigorous and opened approach, free of every religious or philosophical bias. The Institute therefore constitutes a rational alternative as well to the downward slide of the credulity as to the excesses of skepticism. This list is not exhaustive and you can notice that each historical-psycho-sociological context generates its own phenomena, of which the common point is the unusual relation spirit/matter. In the ancient druidic practice , these phenomena actually overlapped all more or less.

The existence of the psi phenomena encourages us to reflect on the other assumptions, dualistic or monist, and obliges science to take into account the psyche or the awareness, notion got past in the 19th century. The psi phenomenon shows us that our intuitive time notion is insufficient, since precognition makes it possible , to a certain extent (always limited), to know not yet occurred events. Current science is incomplete and cannot correctly conceptualize the relation soul/mind.

- Distant influence without contact.

- Monism or globality of the universe, interrelationship of all its elements (theory of correspondences).

- Existence of forces, supernormal and almost autonomous energies.

The main hopes of the druidism of today are therefore the change of scientific paradigm in progress (science finally will recognize the role of the mind in or on the matter); the metaphysics of the unity (global universe, ecology); and the possibility for Man to change spiritually (transpersonal psychology, psi training, martial arts…) The druidic philosophy, basically optimistic, leaves a choice place to metapsychic faculties, since it advocates an in-depth transformation of the human being, being based on an expansion of our awareness.

At the present time, no theory (in the scientific sense of the word) relating to these phenomena is sufficiently worked out to be able to be taught. Consequently, every person proposing a current use of these phenomena is, in the best case a dreamer, in the worst case a swindler possibly as well as a charlatan. Unlike what some people believe or let believe, there exist therefore no certificate of parapsychologist, and the only people likely to be designated by this name are the researchers, with truly scientific mind, working on the phenomena in question.

Lastly, are the parapsychological phenomena dangerous?

In themselves not! It is even possible that we live all some of them without being completely conscious of that.

On the other hand, a person who experiments them can be mentally disturbed because of their character out of the ordinary and unusual. It is, moreover, obvious that certain reactions of the entourage are likely to worsen the situation.

Modified or altered states of consciousness. Do the modified states of consciousness as hypnosis enter the framework of the metapsychics? They seem to be able to support the extrasensory perception, but do not come under parapsychology as such.

Let us notice that if the membership to a group involves yielding to the standards which are the rule of it, those differ appreciably from a civilization to another. The reality to which the Westerner of today refers can hardly be compared with that of the Shuar, an Indian people in the Amazon forest belonging to the Jivaro ethnos group. For them, a little as for the Celts of formerly besides, the ordinary reality is untrue, the true reality is elsewhere; where the soul/minds (arutam) of their ancestors, move, where the Spirit of the Big Whole lies. This Spirit which speaks to them in their dreams and in the modified or altered states of consciousness that the plants which he put at their disposal get to them; whereas generally in our civilized society , people are concerned by the relation with reality, therefore with the states of consciousness, only in one purpose: preserving the neutrality of it in order to dissimulate its emotional content.

The modified or altered states, of consciousness, can be of physiological origin: sleep, dreams, relaxation, hypnotic phenomena through weakening of the sensory stimuli (states of daydreams, highway hypnosis, hypnosis of the long haul pilots…) ; or pathological: drug and chemical poisoning (certain delirious episodes), severe dehydration (mirages), disorders of the metabolism of vital gases (decompression or altitude sickness); leading to states of confusion with presence of more or less realistic hallucinatory elements. Atypical oneiric episodes, of a sometimes amazing realism (lucid dream, paranormal dream), can, however, concern the previous category. The same applies to certain intermediary modified or altered states, of consciousness, of which nature and realism are less clear. Still let us add that many of these modified or altered states, of consciousness, could borrow

simultaneously from imagination, ordinary reality, and reality transphenomenal reality, according to the intensity of an experience subjected to great variations.

Starting from the Renaissance, the scientific discoveries and techniques were gradually built, to the detriment of the Christian superstitions and religious beliefs.

In the 18th century, Mesmer and Puysegur popularized the “magnetic sleepwalking” (a therapeutic method based on what we would call today hypnosis), which generated many strange phenomena that we can describe as metapsychics (parapsychological). The Mesmerism then enjoyed an unbounded popularity, which ends up causing academic controversies, until the middle of the 19th century; which saw the ousting of magnetism in France by the Academy of medicine. Germany was nevertheless more receptive to the “sleepwalking,” some “magnetism” lessons appeared; and perhaps it is not useless to remember that many scientists or philosophers were then interested closely in metapsychics (Schopenhauer, Hegel, Goethe…)

In the 19th century, it is a haunting phenomenon which drew the attention. Raps, whose nobody could guess the cause, were made heard in 1846, in the house of a by the name Veckmann, inhabiting Hydesville. Nothing was neglected to discover the author of these mysterious noises, but vainly! Six months later, in 1847, the Veckmann family left the house which was then inhabited by a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, John Fox, and his family; i.e., his wife and his two daughters, Margaret then 14 years old, and Kate then 11 years old.

For three months, nothing occurred, then the raps began again with more strength. Initially they were very slight noises, as if somebody struck the wooden floor of one of the bedrooms, then, each time, a vibration which was felt on the parquet floor. People perceived it even while being in one’s bed. The ground vibrated so extremely that the beds trembled. The raps were heard without stopping, there was even no more way to sleep in this house.

It should be noted that what follows.

- The struck raps began before the arrival of the Fox sisters.

- No phenomenon of autosuggestion can explain this manifestation (since spiritualism had not been born yet).

- The phenomena were as of the beginning subjected to most severe criticism and came out from that vouched by independent observers.

We speak about apparition when people believe to see a person who is in fact in another place, or who died. When the apparition of a dead person is repeated in the same place, we speak about real haunting or “residual haunting ,” in opposition to the “common hauntings ” which are the poltergeists, where people hear the phenomena without seeing apparitions.

We may also, of course, regard as being apparitions…

1. Living beings described by the legends and the myths: God-or Devil, god-or-demons, angels, jinns, mysterious animals (three horned bull , ram-headed snakes, unicorns, dragons, fairies), or others.

2. Spectra coming back from the parallel to ours world calls hereafter: ghosts, soul/minds materialized through various evocations (cf. particularly the Breton anaon). Specialists speak rather today about latent energy trapped in a precise place.

3. Mysterious objects being able to appear here or there (phantom chariot like that of Cuchulainn, the oared wheel –roth ramach- of Mug Ruith, the vimanas of the Indian literature and so on…

Mahabharata Book 8 Karna Parva or Book of Parva section 34.

Thus equipped, that chariot shone brilliantly like a huge fire in the midst of the priests officiating at a sacrifice. Beholding that chariot properly equipped, the gods became filled with wonder. Seeing the energies of the entire universe united together in one place, O sire, the gods wondered, and at last represented unto that illustrious Deity that the car was ready. […] Then He called Nila Rohita that terrible deity robed in skins -looking like 10,000 Suns, and shrouded by the fire of superabundant Energy, blazed up with splendor. […] The triple city then appeared immediately before that god of unbearable energy that Deity of fierce and indescribable form, that warrior who was desirous of slaying the Asuras. The illustrious deity, that Lord of the universe, then drawing that celestial bow, sped that shaft which represented the might of the whole universe, at the triple city. Upon that foremost of shafts, O thou of great good fortune, being shot, loud wails of woe were heard from those cities as

they began to fall down towards the Earth. Burning those Asuras, he threw them down into the Western Ocean.

Mahabharata Book 16 Mausala Parva or Book of clubs Section 1.

When the next day came, Camva actually brought forth an iron bolt through which all the individuals in the race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas became consumed into ashes. Indeed, for the destruction of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas, Camva brought forth a fierce iron bolt that looked like a gigantic messenger of death. The fact was duly reported to the king. In great distress of mind, the king caused that iron bolt to be reduced into fine powder.

For a long time, each community of researchers tended to consider only the kind of apparitions which interested it. Nowadays, the tendency is rather to an increased comparison between the categories.

Some maintained the diabolical origin of all the apparitions, those who are sent by their god-or-demon being excluded of course. Specialists brought the phenomenon of the unidentified flying objects closer to the apparitions of leprechauns or to the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. Other researchers maintained that the apparitions were due to the psychokinesis of one or more “psi subjects.”

About 1860 the “high-knower” Allan Kardec (for the register of births, Leon Hippolyte Denisart Rivail) theorized the phenomenon through a remarkable book entitled: “The Spirit’s Book”; and the International Metapsychic Institute , founded in 1919, as we saw it, became famous for its studies about group telepathy (R. Warcollier) as for his experiments with gifted subjects.

The international metapsychic institute published, during many years, a periodical of very great quality entitled the “Metapsychic Journal.” Dr. Geley carried out a whole series of experiments with mediums like Franek Kluski and Jan Guzik, and got so “ectoplasmic molds” which makes us wonder.

The thirties marked a big turning point in the history of Metapsychics. Five great principles then were gradually put in practice.

- Application of the methods of the experimental psychology to standardize the procedures and to make more objective the experiments.

- Getting spiritualism past.

- Use of the statistical method introduced by C. Richet for the installation of experimental evidence.

- Study of the faculties present in each one and not only of the spectacular case of the great mediums (approach universalist rather than “elitist” approach).

- Research of the laws, principles, and optimal conditions, for getting the psi phenomena.

Extrasensory perception.

Usually named clairvoyance, telepathy… these phenomena bring into play a perception, i.e., a getting of information. As its name does not indicate it, the extrasensory perception most of the time calls upon…… sensor circuits (visualizations, hearings of voice, odors, tastes, tactile feelings…) without there is intervention of the sense organs themselves (the eyes “don’t see” , the ears “don’t hear”).

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, but it will not be useless to return to the subject, the word “radiesthesia” generally designates some types of investigations performed by means of a pendulum or of a divining rod. Various phenomena can indeed refer to clairvoyance and particularly the dowsing, i.e., the knowledge of events or objects using a pendulum or a divining rod (discovery of water, even of missing people).

Research on the ground. This first type of dowsing is relatively common when it is a question of finding water, it was the subject of advanced explanatory studies, but experiments such as that which was led in the University of Munich between 1986 and 1988, showed that, when the water finder in question is isolated from every environmental information (geology, vegetation, geography, meteorology…) ; he is not able to have a performance higher than chance in the detection of water.

Oh yes, it is necessary to say it, druidism must not go with charlatanism!

Research on maps. It is often used in the cases of missing people and could have as a base the extrasensory perception. Many people indeed claim to find the missing persons, but they can just as well make research more difficult by disturbing the work of the investigators, than to take advantage from the distress of the close relations.

Foreword.

As already mentioned above, you should not lose sight of the fact that the specified categories in question are only analysis frameworks established by convenience and that some of the following phenomena were interpreted during History, either in a religious context, or as indication of the survival of the soul/mind. However the metapsychic phenomena occurring subsequently to a death can be claimed in support of the survival or of the reincarnation only if the assumption attributing them to the emotive situation of a living person can be definitively dismissed ; what was never the case, up to now. Consequently, every interpretation of metapsychic phenomenon as the manifestation of a died person, currently falls under doctrines, of course, respectable (spiritualism for example), but which are of philosophical or religious essence, and in no case purely scientific.

TWELFTH LETTER OF THE OLD DRUID OF THE ARDENNE FOREST.

Notice about the individual erdathe.

……….The Irish tradition knows an example of reintegration of the soul into the Big Whole, but postponed. It is the king Loegaire who informs us about that , facing the insistence of St. Patrick about his conversion.

« Nam Neel pater meus non sinivit mihi ... Dunlinge im Maistin in Campo Liphi pro duritate odivi, ut est hoc.”

“I want to be buried on the perimeter of Tara like a man standing in battle , for it was the custom of the pagans to be buried armed, with their weapons at hand….until the day of erdathe, this, according to the magi [the high-knowers] , is the day of the judgment of the Lord” (tripartite Life of St Patrick. Volume II, page 308).

This druidic notion of erdathe is, of course, different from the Christian and Muslim concept of last Judgment. How a father could indeed judge his children? It is a psychological impossibility!

But the fact remains that the goal of everyone on this Earth is the transmutation of one’s piece of divinity, enchased as a pearl in a sometimes disappointing material world, and its passage in the celestial spheres; while starting with that which awaits us after death and where you can be embodied again for the purpose of purification. For more details on this subject see the scholiast of Lucan or the remarks that the emperor Julian, who had lived in Celtica, and was perhaps infected by the faith of his legionaries, held on his deathbed in 363. At least according to Edward Gibbon in his work on the fall of the Roman Empire. “He reproved their grief; and conjured them not to disgrace, by unmanly tears, the fate of a prince, who in a few moments would be united with heaven, and with the stars….. Such was the end of that extraordinary man, in the thirty-second year of his age.”

Whatever such a metamorphosis is based on the knowledge of the nature of soul or mind, of the structures of the universe and of its history, past or future. The result of such monism in some druidic schools is the idea that the ultimate Reality does not have other attributes than Existence and Awareness. It should be admitted nevertheless that there exist remains of (relative) dualism in the druidism. Admittedly, all is one, or is intended to join the one, but the resistance received against the unifying upward movement, is the fact of an initial scission between soul and matter.

Everything is relative! The objects as the phenomena cannot exist on their own, they are bound by a whole chain of causes and effects. Imagine a wave at the sea surface. Seen from a certain angle, it seems to have a distinct existence, a beginning and an end, a birth and a death. Perceived from another angle, the wave does not exist really, it is only a water movement. The wave is only a phenomenon made temporarily possible by wind and water therefore, which depends on a set of circumstances in constant wavering. Each wave, moreover, is connected to all the others.

N.B. This image was especially used by the Irish high-knowers.

The life is only a blend of phenomena, which are constantly repeated because every phenomenon is at the same time effect but also cause. These phenomena are undoubtedly real, but of a very temporary reality, like a torrent or a flame, what we call a moving being is only a flame in a sea of flames, a water drop in the ocean. Immortality in a strict sense of the word does not exist, all that started will have an end one day. On the death of every, human or not, being, the elements from which it is made up perish and breaks up in the physical world; nothing survives it except for the share of divine one which is in it. It is, in this perpetual wavering, controlled by the natural law of causality, that the reality of this world lies.

Nothing in the world is fixed, immutable; on the contrary, everything changes continuously. We see well that we are impermanent since we are prone to death; that certain animals make only a short passage on earth. That the plants, the minerals themselves, have an end. We know that our earth too, when our Sun dies out, will also disappear.

Only the higher Being which is the fate because it is the sovereign law of the Bitus or of the Universe, escapes the wavering of the relative one and remains immutable, through ages. Only the Universal Including is immutable (from a distance), but the living beings themselves, move unceasingly, pass, permute, disappear… Inside ourselves, biologically and psychologically, there is a ceaseless change each minute of our life.

Those who manage to well interiorize the true nature of these phenomena (therefore who realize that everything relative) are called semnothei: they have a particular importance in certain druidic Schools. To see the world in this way is already a beginning of return to the Big Whole. The solution to many problems for Mankind consists in understanding that everything is relative, and that even the soul cannot be imagined without the matter. To become aware of this truth proves to be the fastest of the salvation path (leading to a world which is known as better). Whoever knows it sees the things in their reality, i.e., without their intrinsic illusion. Such is the most effective of the means of coming back into the Big Whole that the Pariollon symbolizes. The general (and not individual) Return to the Big Whole is the peaking point of the druidic doctrines (erdathe). Facing this world controlled by causality, even above the parallel universe of heavenly nature called Mag Meld, Vindobitus, Vindomagus, remains the kingdom over which causality does not rules.

The Big Whole is not a heaven.

The parallel next world of heavenly nature is indeed the result of a merit, even negligible, would be this of believing in the god-or-demon of whom it is the field.

8th century Echtra Condla.

Where everything is beautiful, attractive and pure

Where exist neither fault neither disease nor time

Neither border neither war neither suffering neither sorrow nor slavery.

Here music is marvelous,

There brooks of mead run

And peace there is eternal everywhere.

The Big Whole, as regards it, supposes the complete absence of merit and demerit. It is not, like St. Adamnan says it, simply a world without pride; without contempt, lie, blasphemy, fraud, pretext, shameless, without embarrassment, dishonor, fraud, envious people, arrogance, epidemic, disease, poverty, destitution, destruction, death, snow, wind, moisture, noise, thunder, darkness, coldness. It is still better, even stronger, even more radical. A field where there is neither ground neither wind, neither sun neither moon, neither perception neither absence of perception, neither consciousness, neither this world neither another world, nor space infinity; neither duration neither death nor rebirth. In this ogham point of the space-time (symbolized by the letter eabadh ) the point where all opposites equiponderate ( Welsh lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth ) fire and water prevail only, in other words, soul and matter.

Besides, there is no necessary link between the death and this Pariollon or Big Whole. The Pariollon or Big Whole is reached as soon as the human soul loses any self-awareness. Case of the Welsh awenyddion.

On the Continent the anatiomarus (the great initiate called semnotheos by the Greeks) is the one who is released from any species of desire, from any species of sorrow, is released from everything by the meditation, and who conquered the great science which enlightens (imbas forosnai) forbidden by St. Patrick. He knows all, is informed of everything, and can all, he has already one foot in the beyond the world of the god-or-demons (Sedodumno) or if it is preferred the abode of the god-or-demons, accomplished. It is a mental state which can be reached on the earth by a living being. In this case, the human being in question can continue to move among men, but he belongs already no longer to the world of the illusion or of the relativity, he has one foot in the lmmutability. On his death, he will enter the Big Whole which is beyond the dwelling of the god-or-demons (the sedodumno power 10).

They are such individuals that the texts of Plutarch like that which follows, evoke.

“…He said that among the islands lying near Great] Britain were many isolated, having few or no inhabitants. Some of which bore the names of deities or heroes. He himself, by the emperor's order, had made a voyage for inquiry and observation to the nearest of these islands which had only a few inhabitants, holy men who were all held inviolate by the [Great] British. Shortly after his arrival there occurred a great tumult in the air, and many portents; violent winds suddenly swept down and lightning flashes darted to earth. When these abated, the people of the island said that the passing of someone of the mightier soul/minds had befallen. "For," said they, "as a lamp when it is being lighted has no terrors, but when it goes out is distressing to many, so the great souls/minds have a kindling into life that is gentle and inoffensive, but their passing and dissolution often, as at the present moment, fosters tempests and storms, and often infects the air with pestilential properties." (Plutarch. On the failure, ceasing, or obsolescence, of oracles, 18).

In a way a return to the “original” soup of the beginnings of the energy which produced the world 1); a world where the laws of the ordinary physics and even the principle of cause and effect prevail no longer, or not yet. And, of course, those of morality also.

1) From this explosion of light and matter time and space rose. Luminous energy, time, and space, are the source of the tangible world, from the primary galaxies, generating the various components of the primordial matter (physical atoms), to the current universe, an always inflating “bubble,” of the secondary galaxies.

FOURTH LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

THE BLOSSOMING THROUGH KNOWLEDGE 1).

…………………….“We may compare things human with divine” AusonIus wrote one day (in his poem devoted to the use of the word libra).

A true druidicist must understand that the self-knowledge is the very gaze with which the divine world contemplates itself. The travel towards the absolute immanent divinity consists of acts of knowledge of an increasing width. Knowledge can be got through intellect, it is the case of the philosophical high-knower (from where the god of philosophers). Human intellect can have the revelation of metaphysical energies whose mathematical laws are only a tangible significant translation.

Philosophy too can, in certain cases,lead to a true second birth. Knowledge can also be gotten by imagination (inspirations and aislingi or dream visions). An authentic druidicist , by becoming aware of his ontological unimportance, i.e., of his incapacity to be sufficient in himself in the being (he is only a speck of dust in the universe) to have , from himself, something to be; then realizes simultaneously his inability to know as long as he remains precisely left to oneself, since to know it is the higher form of the being.

The great Iranian prophet founder of Mazdaism, Zoroaster (- 660 - 583) owed his reforming vocation to a series of aislingi (of visions), of which particularly that of a being of light who guided him to the heaven where the Grail called by him Ahura Mazda took center stage.

This higher being was assisted by powers called archangels, at least according to translations. These powers or archangels (called deivi, i.e., god-or-demons by the former high-knowers) were responsible for fruitfulness or richness of men, led armies to victory, and so on).

The first of these light beings, Spenta Mainyu, was a kind of Holy Spirit fighting against the zones of resistance to light.

This visionary realism shown by Zoroaster in the other end of the Aryan world, matches a state of consciousness where beings and things appear in their theophanic function.

There is a continuous rise of knowledge, from the mineral to the highest level of the human conscience.

Each atom of being is an eye or diamond facet, ultimate reflection of the explosion of light which provided it its origin. Man knows God or the Demiurge in accordance with the level of knowledge which is peculiar to him.

As long as there is on a side a subject, a self, withdrawn in one’s ego, and in front an object of contemplation , a divine Being, withdrawn, abstracted in its unknowable nature; there cannot be, whatever the names and attributes that we ascribe to him, a knowledge which grants this contemplation object fully; i.e., which makes it an Absolute Immanent Subject .

This knowledge is not only theoretical, it is also saving, because it causes a true inner transmutation of Man.

The primordial high-knowers always stressed this notion of blossoming of the soul out of its usual standard (or spiritual resurrection); what the people of one Book still did not understand with their Law, their Torah or their Sharia. Resurrectio non est factum historicum sed mysterium liturgicum, as it is said in Latin.

The goal of the druidism the pantheist or panentheist melting (with the Pariollon) which can be carried out only by the knowledge, which presupposes, of course, a changing divine action, carrying a being to its higher condition. The pariollon is a bubbling and acting dynamism in the core of the history of the world such as it took place actually. It is the very spring of life.

The notion of knowledge or science among the high-knowers therefore includes philosophy and science, but also the perception of the supersensible, the visionary perceptions and the other knowledge modes of this type. To the meeting of the flame which springs from the Man who has his head in the stars, a blaze goes down from the heaven or goes up a volcanic eruption resulting from the bowels of the earth. It is the state of awenydd, higher state of the human intellect in which man can receive, through intuition and illumination, what the Pariollon radiates in him; that it is directly or through the god-or-demons who act in this case as mirrors reflecting the light emanating from the innumerable facets of the Grail.From where the prohibition of the imbas forosnai by St.Patrick in Ireland.

Let us quote one of the most famous descriptions of this rise towards the state of awenydd. “I contemplated my god with the eye of the true knowledge, I contemplated my god with the third eye, after he diverted me from all that is other than him, and illuminated with his light. He made me his secrets know, revealed to me his own ipseity. The sovereignty of the divine glory was resplendent. My light faded under his light, my strength disappeared under his strength, my power under his power. My progression was his progression. Then I could contemplate the Truth through the Truth. I have experimented the Truth by the Truth I remained breathless, wordless, in the Truth, in an eternal present; until my god conveyed to me, a science spouted out from his science, the science which enlightens, the ambi-vidtu (Imbas forosnai in Gaelic language).

The effort releases the obstacle, but does not produce the treasure.

There is not opposition, but only difference of means and speed between the philosophy or the science got from outside by the effort or the human teaching and the blossoming of the soul (called moksha in the Indo-Buddhist world) got gradually or at once by the action of the god-or-demons of the Albiobitus (pleroma in the writings of St. Irenaeus).

What differentiates this spiritual knowledge from the science got from outside , it is that it is knowledge of the soul/mind, in other words, knowledge of oneself (the famous "gnothi se auton” carved on the pediment of the temple of the hyperborean Apollo in Delphi. Perhaps a teaching of the Hyperborean high-knower shamans named Abarix or Olenus) to which refers the remark of the grandson of a druid who was Ausonius (eclogue devoted to the word libra). “We may compare things human with divine.” And the portion of divinity in this soul grows according to the spiritual development of the subject and not only according to the only knowledge from Reason.

The human awareness (the menman of every gdonios, about the meaning of this word see Sanskrit manman, mind) has naturally the capacity to accommodate the spiritual reality of all that can be known; and the knowledge which emerges in it a little like an epiphany, in a supratangible way, beyond the veil of mystery, can ultimately come initially from the Albiobitus (pleroma in St. Irenaeus) or from its god-or-demons, who in this respect are a little like the Muslim jinns in certain hadiths glossing the surah 15, 18.

This knowledge can be gotten by the effort of observation and the reflection, it is the science of the philosophers, or it can assail the mind as an intuition projected in it in an unexpected way (inspiration of the Welsh awenydd. Greek noos/noesis). In this case two possibilities.

The subject is not aware (does not see) the cause which projects in him this illumination (case of the ordinary druidicist ) or then, second possibility, he realizes on the contrary the origin of this inspiration. It is in this case a direct divine communication (the awenydd sees the entity projecting this knowledge in him).

Knowledge by inspiration or intuition (Greek noos/noesis) , of the high-knower the awenyddion, is distinguished from that got by the Reflection and the effort (that of the philosophers high-knowers) only by the fact that, in a case, what is determining it is the effort of the human freedom, which is the cause of it. But if the effort releases the obstacle, it does not produce the treasure in itself we have said. Whereas in the case of the blossoming of the soul called moksha by Indians, it is a gift of sovereignty of the Fate. In all the cases it is nevertheless the same manifestation of the Big Whole of the Pariollon, on different levels , by the way of the senses or another way; manifestation whose limit is the aisling or vision of the god-or-demon “projecting” knowledge in the consciousness ( Old Celtic menman, cf Sanskrit manman, mind) of the anamone in a waking state; in a vision similar to that of eyes.

The philosopher high-knower does not see God or the Demiurge, does not see the god-or-demons, but perceives things thanks to them, according to his effort.

The awendyddion high-knowers, on the other hand, hear them by spiritual hearing or even straightforwardly see them.

The last of these cases is that which preserved for us the popular Christianity of Celtic origin with the history of Joan of Arc (her famous chenu wood was a sacred wood out of logging, haunted by Celtic matres – some fairies - also protecting its sacred spring : the feverish persons Fountain).

The first two categories are those of the ordinary druidicists , having some knowledge they did not get from outside by an unspecified human teaching; but not realizing that it is the Pariollon which makes this knowledge “burst” in them like bubbles. The pariollon is bubbling and acting dynamism in the core of the history of the world such as it took pace, we have said.

The mission of the primordial high-knower implies a vision of the god-or-demons in a waking state. Vision whose method is explained by a mode of perception different from that of the sensitive organs and which is to be attached to the old Celtic notion of enlightenment by intelligence.

The Judeo-Islamic-Christian idea of monolatrous people, i.e., of a “God-or-Demiurge” who would have created the world to play with it and would have allowed in spite of his absolute power the appearance of the suffering and of the “evil,” makes no sense.

The world was not created by a necessarily intelligent and benevolent cause; the uncreated proving at the same time good and evil (or neither good nor evil ), at the same time eternal and not eternal, finite and infinite, personal and impersonal, One and multiple, or another.

The, typically monolatrous challenge defying common sense, of the creating ex nihilo, of everything, God-or-Demiurge, dealing with the least of our details, does not deserve that we linger on that , because it is a non-problem. Let us leave this care to the theologists of the monolatry who, under the name of Providence, turn over and over vainly this squaring of the circle for more than 2000 years. It is really conceivable that it is God who made men some murderers, robbers, liars, informers, misers, by action or omission, what the same thing is; since we saw that it could not be the Devil, who does not exist. The devil is only the scapegoat of the God of the Bible, the God-or-demiurge of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his role theoretically limited by the absolute power of the god-or-demiurge in question, can neither justify nor really explain the evil which we deplore unceasingly. But, developing Matthew 6,31-33, here is for example what the catechism of the Catholic church (official catechism) dares still to write, alas, today :“ The Witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history.” Incredible! Let us return on our subject, that is better!

Let us say more justly that the pariollon is bubbling and acting dynamism in the core of the history of the world such as it takes place indeed.

The universal cosmic Cauldron that is the Pariollon is a neutral, neither god-or-demon nor goddess-or-demoness, without attributes or almost (IT IS, immortal, without a task to do, everywhere present and nevertheless unknowable. It is a being immanent transcendent which infiltrates the world, instills life to it and bears it). It is the idea of God or the Demiurge most impersonal ever designed. It is the very antithesis of all the anthropomorphic hardware of the Bible in this field.

Every true knowledge proves epiphany or theophany of the divine world. To the downward spread of the light from the Albiobitus (Pleroma in the writings of St. Irenaeus) corresponds the ascending illumination of Mankind, and the increasing participation of Mankind in the divinity corresponds to the gradual manifestation of this divine light.

The life of the one who believes in the possibility of this self-blossoming , in the possibility of finding again the awentia or awenyddia (the universal cosmic soul), is, of course, already changed because of this only knowledge. Gift of the Fate or Tocade (middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, destiny, toicthech “fortunatus.” The labarum is its sign, its messenger) or division of its sovereignty, this faith is also a response of the mere mortals to the challenge their status constitutes.

This liberating knowledge is in a way truly crucifying, because it begins with a realization of our status of simple limited and weak mortals; invited nevertheless to live of the life of the god-or-demons and to be cooperators of the salvation of this world through the full and whole achievement of its cycle.

This optimism is the dynamism of the knowledge projected towards the future. This indomitable optimism supported the primordial high-knowers in their ordeals or gave the force of a Gutuater or of Mariccus… (two high-knowers martyred by Romans). It makes trustful in the possibility of this self-liberation through the god-or-demons, who give again life to the dead and who call for the existence, what did not exist.

It is this mindset which makes that the very whole nature induces us to seek with confidence this “hyperborean” harmony we lost.

The only attitude having some value, it is the distinction (distinction and not negation) of the two levels of reality.

On the level of the usual, empirical, reality, there are obviously many things and many entities, different. It is the world of the cosmic great mother goddess-or-demoness also called Morrigani.

It is on this level that the higher Being can seem a personal God-or-Demon endowed with precise attributes. Pure white light in darkness, giving periodically birth to the world, keeping it in its being and governing it for finally recalling it to him.

Since everything is multiplicity on this level, it may then in this case being legitimately honored under different names (Allah, Jehovah, or other).

But this spontaneous knowledge always proves insufficient. When you think a little, you realize that on the higher level all these distinct entities are as one.

In fact, there exists really only the Big Whole of the Pariollon or cosmic universal, eternal, infinite, cauldron, it is only the true reality, apart from which there is no true reality; it is the Being by definition (Bitus), awareness, and fullness, but it can be really known only through the state of awenydd.

By this mystical experiment, we therefore put our individual soul (the anamone) back to its place: an element of the immanent absolute universal soul: the awentia or awenyddia.

But do not be mistaken nevertheless. The world of the cosmic Great mother goddess-or-demoness or fata Morgana, is, of course, multiplicity veiling the higher reality, but it is not a mere illusion for all that. We cannot anyhow consider every human perception, because sullied with some optical illusions, or some mistake, as a mere illusion. The world of the Fata Morgana or of the cosmic great mother goddess-or-demoness is, itself, fully real on its level. Caused then kept in the being, governed and recalled to it by the Uncreated one of the Pariollon which is the main cause, original, effective, of it, without being the creator of it in a strict sense of the word, it remains an undeniable reality, but a relative reality. The world is not a without value reality from which it would necessarily be advisable to withdraw in order to become permeated with its nothingness.

But how under these conditions explain more precisely the birth of the world?

In the shape of a cosmic egg, the Bitus or universe can remain billion years in a state of concentration being perfectly sufficient unto itself, but once waked up it overflows with energy, it passes onto another level of activity.

The initial impulse can therefore come only from a movement of will of the Uncreated one. The One of the Pariollon wants to become multiple. But such a will presupposes the reflection, and in the case of the Being of beings (Bitus), outside which there is nothing, this reflection can be only a reflection on oneself.

The only mystery remains therefore this first reflection. The Bitus turns to itself, takes itself as an object and becomes at the same time, for the first time, subject, in turn. It divides itself in this way into two parts and is placed then also as a partner, facing this second element, however, resulting from itself. It is a phenomenon of self-differentiation and this self-differentiation of the Absolute Immanent One forms the starting point of the event called (pro) creation of the world by monotheists.

Indeed, once achieved the first division or objectification , other divisions differentiations and reflections can follow, and other unions penetrations fecundations or reproductions. The cosmic egg that is the Bitus hatches, explodes and gives another world, that of the Pariollon.

The primeval division, the beginning of the process of concretization, it is the bursting, on the one hand, into soul and, on the other hand, into matter, thus causing a first relative duality.

One just separated, these two halves will be joined again, but no longer like before the beginning of this process, in an undifferentiated whole: they will be joined while preserving the polarity resulting from the separation and their new individuality (therefore their distinction).

The new union, of these two facets of the Bitus, does not generate a static unit, because it becomes, on the contrary, fecundation, reproduction, multiplication, multiplicity.

Consequently, the procreating power of the Uncreated one will have no longer limits but itself. Its vibration on itself as a motionless engine determines little by little the essence then the existence of the things. The same goes with the spiral movement of the universe, which is constantly expanding, from the center towards the periphery (first spiral of the triskelion) . Its vibrating and rhythmic dance on itself gives form to the world, and maintains it moving.

We call Cosmic Great Mother Goddess or Demoness (C.G.M.G.) precisely, this power of procreation.

The world of the Cosmic Great Mother Goddess or Demoness or Morrigani is a spreading of this cosmic egg which is multiple without multiplicity, opposition in the identity, etc.

The very being of the Pariollon, which is coincidence of the opposites, center and periphery, darkness and lights… are spread in beings and things; and it is well besides why we experiment this unity of every being with God or the Demiurge, deep down within ourselves (within our anamone, our menman. Regarding the meaning of this word see Sanskrit manman, mind).

The world that the Cosmic Great Mother Goddess or Demoness (creating power of the Uncreated one also called fata Morgana) causes, comprises elements of all kinds, plants, men, animals, soul/minds, but also god-or-demons. Through the Cosmic Great Mother Goddess or Demoness the powers of the Uncreated one take a particular meaning.

Through this mythical figure that is the Cosmic Great Mother Goddess or Demoness , the creation of the world is designed by the high-knowers in such way that this creation is rather in reality a spreading in the world, of the generating principle; without, however, the world being lost completely in this God or Demiurge (panentheism), or this God or Demiurge being lost completely in the world (pantheism), without this world losing every autonomy or God or the Demiurge being dissolved in it.

Creation therefore, yes, but by spreading, and not ex nihilo as among the Christians or starting from an eternal matter as in the Bible. No result of the verb to be of which we would make God or the Demiurge, but no result of the verb to be either out of God-or-Evil , added to exist beside him.

There is therefore unity, but differentiated in Absolute Immanent and World (a differentiated non-dualism: the monism).

A pre-Celtic myth summarized this idea but with a change of gender by the way , that of the original giant: Bith. The world was born from a sacrifice. The cosmic Man (the giant Bith) was sacrificed in the beginning of times and it is from his limbs that the world (bitu) resulted.

This myth of the former druidism summarized well two ideas.

- Firstly: the mass of appearances is anything else only the One in a changed form.

- Secondly: the multiplicity is a sacrifice of the unity. The unity sacrificed itself.

These two ideas remain two basic ideas of druidism. In the multiple one, it is necessary to find the one, but each one can discover it in himself. And if the self-sacrifice, of the unity, led to the multiplicity, this process can also be reversed: the total renouncement to the multiplicity in the contemplative focusing makes it possible to experiment the found again universal primeval unity.

Every individual is a part of the multiplicity. By sacrificing so to speak himself, while giving up his autonomy as an individual, and by erasing also at the same time from his awareness the multiplicity of the other things and of the other beings; he returns into the differentiated one of the Pariollon and can reach so the status of awenydd.

Editor’s note.This rather abstruse gobbledygook is not obscurer than that of Christian theology or than the simplistic and contradictory naivety of the Islamic theology as regards the jinns or the cursed verses (about the 3 daughters of Allah). Perhaps is it better in this case to acknowledge hesitating between atheism agnosticism and pantheism. What is certain in any case it is that it is impossible to be really materialist atheist.

The existence of the Pariollon or expanding universe is undeniable. According to Strabo certain Celts and particularly the Galicians in Spain were atheistic. Is it possible or is it rather a lack of nuance of the thought of Strabo unable to understand the subtleties of certain ancient druidic Schools. In any case here his quotation. “Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night.”(Strabo, Geography III, 4, 16).

In certain situations the higher Being indeed intervene itself in the course of the world i.e., in itself. The course of the cycle in progress is then abruptly inflected by an exceptional historical intervention. A part of the Big Whole is embodied in the world to restore the truth of things, at least temporarily.

Some of these earthly manifestations , the last ones particularly, thanks to the Celts, could be memorized, mythologized and thus saved from oblivion, that of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, or of Lug for example, even of Hesus…

The Spirit transcends the world; but it is also completely immanent in it, nearer to man than his own bones, as his own blood. It is the guide and the help of the mortals, as essential to life as the air.

Nature, on the other hand, is a kind of clock ready to continue to function by itself.

It is a little the mother sung by the romantic ones, the origin and the end of all appearances, of all semi-realities (relative realities).

Such a design of the world and of the higher being; the realities of the world of the cosmic great mother goddess or demoness or Fata Morgana are subjected to the law of the perpetual change, to the cycle of the births or of the disappearances, which no one escapes; makes absurd the attribute “father” given without reservation to God or the Demiurge by Judeo-Islamic-Christians. The gnostic intellectuals were right in a way since they did not describe this first being as a father, but as a pro-father, in other words, as a father before the father.

As for the Man too, on the other hand, he is also, of course, a part of the Absolute Immanent , but he proves so distant from this origin that he does not feel either really son of God or of the Demiurge.

In this process of spreading of the higher Being of the divinity then of the world, the god-or-demons on the other hand, are well in enough intermediate situation to justify the image of a God-or-Demiurge “father.”

Man does not represent less a form of separate existence insofar as he is alone able to recognize his need for absolute immanent fully and to traverse the way which leads to this state of the being. It is in the human kingdom only that the beings become able of self-reflection (I think therefore I am, therefore the higher Being is, but also reciprocally).

The Man is higher than the world in the sense that he holds a spark of soul coming from this remote Father (the sacredness it is the Man, nemed in Ireland, nemetos on the Continent).

1) But it should not be forgotten that hope also can save. To believe that after death we are embodied again in a better world is enough. To evoke a helpful and psychopompous deity like Hornunnos or Hesus is not even necessary to resurface in their kshetra. No need for a Nembutsu in our druidism!

FIRST LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER AREMI.

NATE, MENTO BETO TO DIVO: CONSTANTLY THINK OF THE DIVINITY ONE MY SON.

………….Science is also research of truth. “Truth in our heart, strength in our arms and accuracy of the language” such is the ideal of druidism (triad reported by Cailte answering a question of St. Patrick in the colloquy of the ancients : Acallam na senorach).

Accuracy of the language… accuracy of the language… this triad shows the importance of the studies and knowledge in the ancient druidism, well. One of the Gaelic nicknames of the god-or-demon boss of the high-knowers, the Suqellus called Dagda in Ireland, Gargant on the Continent, was precisely ruad rofessa, in other words “the red - ruad - of the great science - ro fessa -”. So Fenians were never men of one book but of several. Of a whole library in reality!

As Pelagius reminded about it, the Man can, through the only effort of his will, resist his inclinations and reach impeccability. But in the case of the high-knower of amarcolitanus type, the participation in the divine life comes neither from a will of the flesh, but from an initiative of the Fate which is, by definition, interdependent of mankind. The animals themselves for example are in no way aware of what the Fate is. To believe in the concept of Fate is the characteristic of Man.

The faith of the high-knower of amarcolitanus type is the free response from Man to the Fate or Tocade in Icelandic language Gaefa (middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, destiny, toicthech “fortunatus,” tonquedec in Breton language. The labarum is its message) which reveals itself.

The state of amarcolitanus, is therefore an act of benevolence of the Fate towards certain (predestined) mortals. The higher Being that is the Bitus filled us all with its sacred nature , but it chose some of ours to be its relays. The high-knowers of amarcolitanus type are nevertheless only intermediaries through whom the higher Being itself speaks. Some messengers consequently!

They are, of course, chosen and devoted through its gift of sovereignty, but they do not remain less men, with all their weaknesses (see the myth of the annual paralysis of the Ulaid ). The state of awenydd in fact, unlike the kingetes in an ecstasy state, does not change them completely, because it does nothing but touching upon them.

The high-knowers of the amarcolitanus type are only more explicit messengers than the miracles or signs of the Fate. The high-knowers of today made no longer miracles. The resilience of their message is in itself the miracle. It is no longer essential that a high-knower of today is a healer or miracle-worker. They too can fall into the mistake or to be at fault as we could see it throughout the recent history of our community.

The newspaper entitled the Glas of Misters J ........, A ...... and G ......, the circumstances of the rise of the G ..... D ........ D… G ..... of Misters D ....... P .......... and V ...... the charges without bases of the secretary of the C ...... D… G ....., Mrs. H ....... C ......., to the journalists, etc., etc. the list is unfortunately long.

What remains for the amarcolitanus high-knowers of today to the true ones, it is the vocation and the knowledge. The knowledge higher which is not pure intellectualism, but which is already almost too, melting of the individual soul called anamone, combined with the mind (menman), into the Big Whole (general knowledge).

The original intention of druidism is to enter the uppermost reality which is the unconditioned ultimate including (the Pariollon was as a cosmic energy source), for want of anything better. By this knowledge, of the world of god-or-demons, and that of Man, the druidism aims at enlightening the night which surrounds us and therefore at contributing to the blossoming of the soul of Man, regarding the various alienations in this world. As he takes this route, the high-knower of amarcolitanus type will discover that it is also, in the beginning, in reality an initiative from the sovereignty of the Tokad or Fate with respect to him; but his faith in his destiny will be supported by the intrinsic interdependence which exists between God or the Demiurge or the Fate and the Man.

The Man being too dependent on his original weakness inherited from Hornunnos, he lost his ability to comply with the destiny envisaged by the higher Being in his connection. This is why only a sovereign choice from the Being of the beings or Bitus can make him a believer in his destiny , in other words, to save him. Such salvation is free and unmerited. But aren't the god-or-demons and their father the Fate frequently anextiomaroi, virotoutoi iovantucaroi teutates dunates or mopates ???

The metaphysical thought progress of the druidic quest for the grail merges thus with the increasingly thorough discovery than the Man is or remains believer in the god-or-demons of the Fate only because the Fate precisely seems completely and unconditionally interdependent of the mere mortals, who made the god-or-demons in their image precisely.

Once again let us repeat it, God and men are by definition interdependent since they are the men who make the gods. The men are only God become aware of himself. They are therefore like God, neither good nor bad, just relentless.

This solidarity of God and gods with the gdonioi (mortals) results in an uninterrupted dialog, even if it is sometimes conflicting. From Hyperborea to the world of today, through the Empire of Ambicatus, the Celtic god-or-demons appear as those who do not cease being revealed or to approach men; because, as this reality proves at the same time nearest and most hidden one of the realities (the including it is not from the start accessible, available) is therefore to it to provide the wakening, the blossoming or the illumination of the minds.

This sovereignty is, however, never granted to everybody, it is conceded only to certain predestined for various reasons, Celts (the Fate has reasons that Reason does not know and it is mysterious!)

The higher Being or Bitos is by definition interdependent of the men, the god-or-demons can do nothing without mankind.

Here for example how the former druidism in its language pertaining to it described the force of the call made to certain human (the true high-knower in this story in fact it is Connla and not Corann).

When the son of Conn Cetchathach (“of the hundred battles”), Connla, was invited to leave in the company of a maiden marvelously beautiful, King Conn called upon the science and the magic of the Irish druids for dissuading him from doing that.

Conn therefore spoke in these words to his druid, whose name was Corann, because they all had heard what the woman said to her son. “I ask you Corann of great song and art, an excessive demand has been placed upon me and it is beyond my advice, since I took the sovereignty I have not met such a struggle. Now I am captured by a power greater than myself. My son is being taken from my kingly side by the spells of a woman whom I cannot defeat.”

The Irish druid therefore recited an incantation to counter the voice of the invisible woman, so people heard her no longer and that Connla consequently was in the inability of seeing her. But before from going away, driven out by the incantation of the old Irish druid, the woman had time to throw an apple to Conlla, and he remained one month without taking drink nor food. It seemed to him that anything was no longer worthy to be eaten , except for its apple. It did not decrease, though he consumed from it, and even it remained whole.

The incantation of the druid of the Irish decline , which made the messenger of the other world move back, however, proves powerless against the apple. Connla is hit by nostalgia and languor so much so that, when the maiden appears a second time, he boards her crystal boat and leaves with her.

What is in question, in this legend (Echtra Condla), it is the power of the vocation or of the call of the world of the god-or-demons (the angel or the maiden messenger from the other world); which resists even a month fast of Condla, alone with his apple.

The apple is, the fruit of immortality, science and wisdom. We will never stress enough the importance of it in the Celtic legend. It is the archetypal fruit of the Other World, not the biblical apple of which the consumption constrains the Lord to drive out Adam and Eve of the Garden of Eden. On the contrary, the apple is, for the Celts, a means of getting or remaining in touch with the other world; except for this detail, which has its importance, that it is never the druids who give it to human beings [it is impossible to better say the divine and nonhuman origin of the vocation of amarcolitanus high-knower. Editor’s note].

The druidicist in this case gets in touch with his destiny freely and out of love in a way. The druidicist of amarcolitanus type is a man (or today a woman) basically convinced that it is the destiny itself which comes and seeks the men or the women like him. Like a child letting himself carried by his mother, the high-knower of amarcolitanus type must let itself carried by the signs and the calls of the Fate or Tokad (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, destiny, toicthech “fortunatus,” tonquedec in Breton language. The labarum is its voice). This faith able to move or to make mountains collapse, which renews thoroughly the life of a man as his intelligence of all things; must, however, answer the initiative of this fate or Tocade or Gaefa which comes, by revealing itself, to meet mankind.

In the case of a Gnostic in the West of the type amarcolitans, the salvation is possible only because the Fate shares with him a little from its sovereignty. The high-knower of amarcolitanus type must, of course, also act, and not remain passive, but the motion goes initially from the absolute immanent oneself of the higher being or Bitus; to the individual self of the anamone and of the menman (cf Sanskrit manman, mind); from God or the Demiurge to the man, and not the opposite. In other words, the Westerner Gnostic sages of the amarcolitanus type are men or women having an idea of the world (Weltanschauung) which does not end, like in the path of the Kingeto, into the total melting with the Big Whole of the Pariollon as of this world; but into a kind of more or less intimate union nevertheless, of the being, with it (through a partial and spontaneous blossoming , of the soul).

The fundamental experiment of the will of sovereignty of amarcolitanus type is thus characterized by a powerful will to live: impassioned efforts in preparation for the achievement of given ideals. The druidic knowledge of the amarcolitanus is initially turned towards outside, it is confronted with the world. The emotions are not suppressed, however, but channeled. The will to live is affirmed and intends to overcome, even in the failure, like Merlin’s prophecies concerning the Breton hope show it well to us. The high-knower of amarcolitanus psychological type is a stubborn person who makes one’s way through, from the doubt to the certainty of the knowledge, from uncertainty to confidence, from the awareness of his congenital weakness to the getting of the salvation through (divine) sovereignty .

Whereas the majority of the Celtic groups preferred the moon worship, the former high-knowers themselves (the druidicist ategnati) venerated especially the sun. The sun was for them the physical and material representation of the divine light where the great souls (anatiomaroi) are molten. It was never worshipped as such, as an object, like we saw it with the example of the Irish king Cormac, but as a window through which the high-knower could see and contemplate the Pariollon including the universe. This one was behind this window, according to them.

What proves it also it is the legend of the Irish high-knower Mug Ruith…

Imtheachta Moighi Ruith Andso.

Tri bliadna trichad robai mailli ria Simon. Is andsin romeabaid a leth-shuil oc forba gamma ig sliabh Ealpa i sneachta mor 7 rodallad in leth-shuil ele ig fastad na greine fri dib laithib in darbri conderna da laa dinn oenlo conmebaid a leth-shui corbo dall.

Here below the adventures of Mug Ruith. He lived thirty-three years with Simon Magus. He blinded then one of his eyes whereas he slaughtered a calf in the permanent snow of the Alps. He lost his other eye by stopping the sun for two days above Darbre, in order to make them one day. Then he became blind because of that.

Let us translate: by contemplating the sun ceaselessly, Mug Ruith became blind because of that. The fact that the Pariollon was supposed being inside, or even beyond, the sun, proves that the amarcolitanoi high-knowers of this time, did not regard the sun as a simple burning celestial body. According to their designs to them of space and time, it represented a dimension of their own existence, in parallel travel compared with them. A commonly widespread belief in the West of Ireland is for example that the peoples of fairies cannot be seen by the mere mortals because living “beside the sun.” The high-knower lived in the earthly dimension, but through his knowledge, he was able “to transfer” his position in order to communicate with the spiritual forces. Conversely, they could manage to get that the spiritual forces “transfer” their position in order to influence the physical world and the matter.

After his death the soul of a high-knower of the amarcolitanos or semnotheos type spouted out in the sky (comets and shooting stars were regarded as the souls of exceptional beings on the way towards the firmament, ascending to heaven we would say today); and went through the sun. But the sun was not the ultimate end of this travel of the souls. The soul of the high-knower become amarcolitanos, semnotheos or awenydd, went through it to reach a sphere even ultimately higher, in the middle distant of the stars and constellations : that of the Pariollon.

The sun was therefore, under these conditions, a crossing point (with one way). Beyond, the soul (the anamone) can no longer go backwards. It is come at the end of its fantastic cosmic hopscotch: the melting within the Pariollon, the Pariollon is together the light splashing produced by the fusion of these myriads of great souls (anatiomaroi), the very place of the melting of the beings and of the world.

FIRST LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER JEAN MARTIN.

THE MEDITATION IN THE HORNUNNOS WAY (sitting beneath an oak like Merlin. Dhyana in Hinduism).

……….The one who has one day and in this way, reached the blossoming of one’s soul (phenomenon called moksha in India) will be able the following time to reach it more and more quickly (it is a question of training).

“They do not normally answer the questions that are asked to them, but they leave suddenly a kind of ecstasy like a deep sleep and they answer in a style which is peculiar to them and which besides is over ornate. Then when they return to the common sense, they lost the memory of their remarks, as if they spoke only under the influence of fanatic soul/minds. Their dreams inspire them, others write as they take down what was dictated. However, they call upon God (?) and the Holy Trinity (?) ” (Marx, Literatures).

This religious sensitivity therefore favors the illumination of the moment which transcends time, the instantaneous blossoming of the soul which is gotten by starkness and emptiness , i.e., by the effacement of a too filled with passions subject. You are then capable of joining the living universe, not according to appearance, but from the inside. Because the recipient of such vision has faith in this primeval Breath which moves all the living entities. He is invited to a kind of assent: to join an original state which the promise of an eternal life springs. From where observations of Gerald of Wales on their subject in the 12th . Gerald’s witness statement is, of course, hostile, we feel well that it is not very far from equating these men with sorcerers (we are in the 12th don’t forget it); but it does not remain less revealing about an incredible survival of this type of high-knowers, sitting under an oak like Merlin. Dhyana in Hinduism we have said.

This Sanskrit word is composed of a stem meaning “middle, center” and of suffix meaning to act, act, action. It is finally very close to the word “meditation” precisely (medit-ation).

If you ask to a follower, and even more so to a master of the druidism in the Hornunnos or Merlin way , what is his druidism… He will probably and invariably answer, “to be sitting beneath an oak.” The druidism of this type, the awentieticus druidism, it is the quiet meditation in the forest. To be awentieticus in this design of the things, it is to act without doing nothing more but only what is necessary to remain living i.e., breathing… is “to act in a basic way,” “to be oneself” thus, etymologically , “to meditate.”

“Divinis humana licet componere”“ We may compare things human with divine.” Ausonius (poem on the use of the word libra).

In other words: we can find our way to reach the world of the god-or-demons by seeing clearly in our own nature.

The druidism is the art to plunge in the nature of one’s being. The druidism of the type awenydd (distortion of the word aventieticus in Old Celtic, a word the meaning of which is “illumination or instantaneous blossoming of the soul”) is therefore also the art to see in the nature of one’s being. It is a technique intended to start a self-awareness, likely to make the limits of the mindset shatter.

Certain Schools recommend meditating on triads.

Examples of triad.

“To revere the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one” (Diogenes Laertius).

“The truth in our hearts, the strength in our hands and the art of speaking well” (motto of Fenians).

The Poetry in Gaelic berla fene is besides a developed form of the triad .

“Now a question. And you, my lad, of whom are you son?

Not hard to say: I am son of Poetry,

Poetry son of scrutiny, scrutiny son of meditation, meditation son of great lore, great lore son of inquiry, inquiry son of investigation, investigation son of wisdom, wisdom son of the three gods of Danu (bia)

And you, O my senior, whose son are you?”

Essentially, unfortunately, these poetic forms remain often very difficult to translate and more still to adapt well… for want of anything better, it is therefore advisable to be satisfied with a literary approximation.

The questions asked by a master play also a great part in this type of druidism. It is very often a very short dialog between the Master and the disciple… the first asks a question, the second answers it as he can, and the master gives the solution. They are sentences being used to illuminate the spirit, this would be only for a fraction of a second or for the eternity (aiu), and, first of all, by making him a little humbler.

“They converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they mean another; and they like to talk in superlatives” (Diodorus of Sicily V, 31).

For example. The high-knower Crutine went one day to another high-knower’s house, and his pupil with him, a student with a master's pride. Crutine himself remained outside and sent his pupil for hospitality to the high-knower's house. A hog's belly was given him in a big cauldron, and the high-knower who had agreed to accommodate Cruitine began conversing with the student. He observed the great pride of the student and the smallness of his intelligence. So when the meat was boiled he said in the presence of the student”:tofotha tarr tein?” i.e., is it time to take it off the fire ? in order that he might know what answer the student would give him ; because he had heard Crutine boasting of the other's wonderful knowledge as if it were himself of whom he spoke, and he did not believe him.

He repeated thrice “tofotha tarr tein” , but the young disciple not said a word.

Thereafter arose the student and came to the place where Crutine was and related the news to him i.e., the words which the poet spoke i.e., 'tofotha tarr tein? "

Good, says Crutine, when he tells them again, say you to him: “Toe lethaig foen friss ocus fris adaind indlis” i.e., put a kneading trough under it, and light a candle to see if the belly be boiled.”

The disciple was very astonished by this answer, because he did not know that lethech also meant “kneading trough ,” he knew the word only in its meaning “flounder.”

The word Lethech indeed means two different things in Irish . It is, in the first place, a name for a kind of fish [a flounder], which is so called from its breadth and thinness. But Lethech is also a name for a kneading trough, because the bread is spread on it.

When the student then had sat within on his return the very knowing said the same, and the student said : “toe lethaig etc.”

Says the high-knower: " It is not a student's mouth that has returned this answer! He is near who returned it. Crutine is near. Call him from outside.”

Crutine is then summoned, great welcome is made to him, and other food is put into the cauldron. And little is the hubris of the student because the very knowing jeered at him until he addressed Crutine (Cormac’s Glossary. Entry Lethech).

This persistent need for omniscience juxtaposed to a perpetual humility proves to be characteristic, and we will be able to refer to what Caesar notes about science and pedagogy of the high-knowers. “They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods” (B.G.VI, 14).

Colloquy of the two sages. So Nede went home, and with him went his three brothers, Lugaid, Cairbre, and Cruttine. As they went a bolg belce (puff ball) chanced to cross their path. Said one of them: ‘why is it called a bolg belce?' Since they did not know, they went back to Eochu and remained another month with him. Again they set forth, and on the way chanced to encounter a rush. Since they did not know why it was so named, they went back to their tutor. At the end of another month, they set out again. A gass sanais (a sprig of the herb sanicle ?) chanced to be in their path. Since they did not know why it was named, gass sanais (sprig of the herb sanicle ?) they returned to Eochu and remained another month with him.

The druidic path evoked by these two anecdotes is therefore a method (having for a goal the knowledge and the blossoming of the soul called moksha in Hinduism) consistent with being the disciple of a determined high-knower.

The four aspects of this way are the following…

- Study of its spiritual doctrines (the famous twelve books of the Fenians in Ireland) with self-examination.

- Practice of the meditation according to the received traditional method.

- Service of the high-knower in question.

- Life in compliance with the moral precepts (ethics) of one’s profession lived in the practice of the truth, of the justice, of the humility, but also in the most complete respect of the two other functions.

EIGHTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE ARDEN FOREST.

Sacrifices prayers and meditation.

……….One of the oldest ways leading to the self-achievement through an at least temporary, melting, in the Big Whole of the Pariollon, is that of the sacrifice.

At the other end of the Aryan world, the dominating confidence of the Brahman always affirmed the unmatched effectiveness of his religious act: it concentrates on the sacramental or ritual word of the sacrifice, all the value of the existence. The concept of higher divinity rises from this psychic condensation. The priest reaches the divine through an instinctive act of abstraction where his will of sovereignty over the world. asserts itself

In the former druidism too, the sacrifice was also the most important act, because it was thanks to it that man got the union with the divinity represented by the god-or-demons. But the sacrifice, which was in the beginning an autonomous path to reach the cosmic cauldron (Grail) as to the god-or-demons; is now generally combined with the prayer and with the techniques of spiritual exercise of the gaesati or kingetes, that we designate today with the name of yoga; the original Celtic term having been banished (because of the Christianization).

The rudiments of this technique were developed by the first man, in spite of his remainders of animality (Hornunnos), and then developed by the Gaesati and the Kingetes or Fenians.

NEMETOS…..

At the end of a long training to suffering (suffering essential to his hominization), he became the archetypal awenydd ; the one who shows the way which leads, from this disappointing life to a definitive state of being , beyond the non-permanency and the suffering.

Sitting under an oak (others say under a black poplar), plunged in an abyss of reflection, one day the great Hornunnos therefore reached the contemplation of the world of the god-or-demons; finding thus at the same time the path of the truth or of his achievement. He had become awenydd, he had had thereby an immediate and direct knowledge of the other world of the Pariollon. He knew that he will be born no longer.This primordial Homo sapiens thus looks like an enlightened being , in the eulogistic sense of this adjective; some see there an exhibitor of mystical way sufficient unto himself……

In this idealized view of the first truly “sapiens” human of the former druidism, we find the idea of a being almost comparable with an anthropomorphic deity. Being the envoy of nobody supernatural, and especially not of a puerile, god-or-demiurge creator of the world we don’t know exactly why (out love?? Out need for love?? To have servants and worshippers???) ; he invites to the methodical meditation according to the stages of an increasingly major focusing; in order to reach to the soul blossoming, the state of awenydd. Ultimate comparison of which we will expound the developed previously presumptions, this Big Brother (Nemed in Ireland) was regarded as an avatar of the deity named Hornunnos, initially known as coming under the Other World.

This way is universal. It does not depend on Hornunnos not more than on whoever. It is possible to find it then to follow it without having heard of our grand brother Hornunnos. Let us say that the great

Hornunnos is a doctor who cures the diseases by giving to his patients the adequate remedy, by showing them how they can cure.That’s all!

Hornunnos, however, did not want to give us an explanation of the world. He did not practice high philosophical speculations or erudite casuistries. His lessons are not secret revelations about the nature of the Grail. They do not aim either a given type of legal or social organization.

Sweetheart, let’s see if the rose

That this morning had open

Her crimson dress to the Sun,

This evening hasn’t lost

The folds of her crimson dress,

And her complexion similar to yours.

Ah! See how in such short space

My sweetheart, she has on this very spot

All her beauties lost!

O, so un-motherly Nature,

Since such a beautiful flower

Only last from dawn to dusk!

Hornunnos therefore simply starts from the analysis of the transitory and provisional nature of the world, the non-permanency of the things, the non-natural and spontaneous blossoming of the Man, his blindness and his madness. As a guardian deity of the first men, no one better than him knows all that. Hornunnos therefore shows the way leading to the freeing from blindness, a liberation which is not the result of theoretical speculations or of philosophical reasoning like in the case of the high-knowers of amarcolitanos type; but which goes through a way leading to the completely practical wakening: the return to nature which is a religious experiment or an inner conversion like another one. See the case of Merlin and Suibhne.

Hornunnos does not impose particular convictions of intellectual or moral type, nor view of the world, on this path which leads to the salvation i.e., to the other world. It is only requested from Mankind to listen, to understand, and to draw conclusions from that. The druidism does not cease appealing to the reason and the capacity of knowledge in Man. His mode of teaching is that of Merlin. And he does not speak ex cathedra, but causes knowledge in those who listen to him, he persuades them by a patient argumentation.

Through his enlightenment or through the blossoming of his soul in the Pure Land of the other world (moksha in Hinduism), Hornunnos reached the state of awenydd as of this life; then he continued to live, a long time, before being melted finally through death, without breach of his life, in the Big Whole of the Pariollon. His teaching was spread, his children multiplied, ad infinitum.

SIXTH LETTER OF THE DRUID JEAN MARTIN.

………..“Castle” is the symbol evoked to mean that the Grail can seem today withdrawn in its ivory tower a little like a “deus” otiosus, what is the very characteristic of any occultation cycle. The aredengto (the erdathe or restoration of the reign of the divinity in Gaelic language) appears in the form of a return to a golden age, that of Thule (the island of Falias for Irishmen) strictly speaking pre-hyperborean but at the same time as the establishment of a radically new world, perfectly reconciled, which would be pervaded with the presence of the divinity and in which men would live as supermen, as thinking gases in a way. Having recovered their hyperborean preternatural powers others would say.

Through poetic expressions still of Aryan style, the Gaelic bards insisted on the sense of this coming of the Hesus embodied in Cuchulainn: through his tripartite education, he will be a friend of all the society.

It is a call to be opened to a right hierarchical scale of values. The teaching through examples of the Hesus expressed the essence of what is to be a life wanting to cross one of the three bridges of light connecting to us to the other world; because it is always by following the walking one that we find the way… Hesus himself is a bridge (A fo ben, bid bont our Welsh friends say) giving back to the Man his unity of ambicatus (who fights on the two sides). All the spheres of the human existence are concerned, social , economic and political, life, family and national life , emotional and marital life (see the conclusion of the famous argument of the Ulaid in connection with the education of the baby Setanta).

In all these fields the Hesus as Setanta came and told us what it is necessary to do to escape the curse of the Ulaid; and the iron law of the endless reincarnation into bacuceos or seibaros (it is in this case a half-reincarnation); in order to be again in tune with the gods.

As every on-duty vate could say it : they are not the healthy people who need the doctor but the patients. How to make this truth which gives back a sense to the suffering discovered by mortals? The attitude and the words of the Hesus embodied then in Cuchulainn reaffirmed the intrinsic and by definition interdependence of the Destiny with us the men.

“I will bid you come for me, said the Hesus Cuchulainn, if I cannot come myself.”

It is here a call clearly sent to the very whole Mankind and not only to his torturers. What the Hesus embodied in the shape of Cuchulainn tries to make comprehensible to us by saying that, it is that we will therefore need, after his death, crucified on the standing stone of Murthemne/Moritamna, and while waiting for his come back, to follow his example, even if he is no longer there.

What the Hesus of Moritamna tries to make comprehensible for us with these last words of his incarnation; it is that since his death, it is up to us to take the initiative to follow him in the path that he opened, in order to find him again one day in the glory of his world, the next world and not up to him to return in order to find us here below.

In Cuchulainn dying, upright, leant against the standing stone, the Fate therefore showed that it could really make our salvation through the light of heroes.

SEVENTH LETTER OF THE DRUID AREMI.

The other names of the Touta. Names, of course, borrowed from the human experiment.

………….The paradox of this community that is Touta does not fit one definition. It is necessary to use various images or allegories, to give an account of the complexity of its vocation.

These names being used for evoking it are thus a good means of grasping its whole extraordinary richness. They are multiple. None claims to exhaust alone the totality of its contents. All, on the other hand, emphasize a facet of it.

What it is necessary to collect the light of this diamond, it is to make these facets sparkle the ones with the others. Such dagolitos (such believer) or such local community, or such time, may, of course, grant its preference to one or the other. Each one, however, has to admit that the look he takes about druidism is partial, and that we do not have the right to overshadow the facets of the druidism which interest us less. You cannot claim to be high-knower today while ignoring this reality.

Some examples of names or periphrases: philosophical and thought out paganism, neo-paganism, Celtic paganism, Celtic neo-paganism………druidiaction, druidiactio are also recognized and used names.

Note 1. The prefix “neo” is used by those who have some scruple to deny that a lot of water has passed under the bridge for 2000 years, since the loss of Celtic independence; since the death of the last Irish druid of direct derivation , in the 10th century, at the Court of the High King of Ireland Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill (O' Neill) King d' Ailech from 943 to 980 and king of the kings of Ireland from 956 to 980 (died Christian). At least it is what we can deduce from the existence still at the time, in the repertory of the great Irish “poets,” of the teinm loida of the dichetal do chennaib and lastly of the imbas forosnai, however, prohibited by St Patrick (cf. the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Urard Mac Coise, a poet having lived in the 10th century).It is an acceptance and a taking into account of twenty centuries of evolution of our civilization.

Note 2. Druidiactio. Expression characteristic of the Touta, insists on the fact that the Celtic-druidic community has to live through ages while being at the same time faithful to the ancestral divine figures, but also mixed with the other peoples on earth. Although it does not include yet the totality of the men in the middle earth, and that it often takes the appearances of a little tribe; or of a badly organized tribe, the Celtic-druidic community joined together under the name of Ollotouta is opened to all those who feel spiritually pagan, and therefore constitutes for mankind the only germ of hope and possible salvation; facing Islamic totalitarianism or the Christian dispersion in the horizontality (to give fish instead of learning how to fish, treat the symptoms instead of treating the causes as our modern philosophers: journalists and politicians, did).

The Ollotouta is a hyperborean nation, a holy nation, which lives its unity in the way of the three headed god-or-demon because the Celtic-druidic Ollotouta is one. The source of this unity of the Celtic-druidic Ollotouta is comparable with the body of a giant. It is visible and must never be underestimated, nor long lost.

The image of the body of the sleeping giant makes it possible to give an account of the diversity of the names and boudisms of the Celtic-druidic community. Some are the eyes of the community, others its ears, other its brain, others its limbs. Between all is to exist a true organic union. To say this, it is not only to describe Ollotouta in a surface way, it is also to indicate its deep truth, which comes under the faith and not the only look at the appearances.

The Primate, the high-knowers, the vates, the veledae and the gutuater/gutumaters, not forgetting the culdees, are only the defenders of this commensality communion. Let us not forget that the high-knowers, joined with the Primate inter pares, form the druidic college , succeeding the college of the former high-knowers, succeeding itself the college of the primordial high-knowers, reformed by the dagolitoi or the faithful of Cuchulainn resurrected and ascended to heaven in his siabur charpat, then by John Toland and Henry Lizeray or their comarba.

The Primate is the visible through age symbol of this commensality which binds between them the high-knowers and the druidicists.

Loyalty to their communion therefore is for the high-knowers a peremptory necessity, the truth or the fruitfulness of their ministry (druidicatio).

The functions in Touta are varied, but that must always be in the service of the body we have just mentioned.

To the ministry of the high-knower is associated, in order to assist it, the ministry of the vates, veledae, or gutuaters/gutumaters, and that of the culdees. Through them also, the blood and the soul of the god-or-demons irrigate the body of this still sleeping giant, for his waking up one day. Without them Touta could not subsist: they therefore belong to its essential structure. The comrunos, from the Primate inter pares to the simple vate, velede or gutuater/gutumater, are invested with a particular responsibility which entitles them to work on its behalf to make living the message of the god-or-demons.

In addition to these ministries, the Touta gave to itself, as we could see it, organization structures allowing it to continue its mission in the most total effectiveness. General meetings, various councils, where each druidicist can bring to the contribution of his gifts, competence, ministry, or of his particular service, depending on his condition. By these structures, and on these various occasions, is expressed and reinforced the organic unity of the Touta, rich of the diversity of its members. The union is a basic and necessary element for the force of the druidicists and the credibility of their mission.

The union remains the indispensable condition of the progress of the Ollotouta, but it can be, of course, experimented in a varied way. The Ollotouta is not a barracks or a Jesuit college!

As already said higher, woe to the Bricrius who will want to harm it by their calumnies or their slanders , ceaseless and never constructive criticisms, or by their reserves and their defections at the last time; even by their coarse intrusions in the private life of one or others.

“ And long ago traders’ accounts and debts registers also accompanied the dead, in order to be balanced or honored in the other world and some individuals happily threw themselves onto the pyres of their loved ones as if they were going to live with them!” (Pomponius Mela III, 2,18).

“Consequently, at the funerals of their dead, some cast letters upon the pyre which they have written to their deceased kinsmen” (Diodorus of Sicily, V, 28).

Another of the metaphors used to designate the whole of the believers in philosophical and thought out Celtic paganism is that of “Communion of All Saints days ”(sic) because the members of the Ollotouta meet again particularly on this day (November the first).

The union of those who are still on the Earth with their brothers gone to a broader life in the middle of Vindomagus (of the blessed Meldi) does not experiment the least intermittency. It is on the contrary reinforced by the exchange of various helps (information, interventions, etc.).

Being nearer the good-or-demons than us, the inhabitants of the Vindomagos, the blessed Meldi, can indeed help us while intervening sometimes still on earth for us.

This is why the high-knower always surrounded with respect the memory of the late, and always admitted that we may pray them or to pay homage to them in order to get their intercession in our affairs. The so delicious to be visited Meldi, form in a way the hereafter druidic Ollotouta.

NINTH LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

Regarding the gender of angels.

……The messengers from the world of the god-or-demons in the canopy or, thereafter, in the atmosphere, are generally seen as being of the female gender; unlike the angels in Judeo-Islamic-Christianity who are themselves, of the male gender.

Genesis chapter VI.

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives of all which they chose.

And Jehovah said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

There were Nephilim in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

The word nephilim is often translated by giants in the Bible, but sometimes conveyed such as it is. It is the plural form of the Hebrew word nephel. Certain bible specialists and historians think that the word means those who make the others falling. Others think, on the basis of Job 3,16, that they are runts.

In the Torah, some non-canonical Jewish and Christian writings, the nephilim are a people resulting from these relations between the “sons of God” (benei elohim) and the “daughters of men.”

In Ireland, they call bansid, banshee in English, the angels, therefore perceived by the Western Gnostic sages as being especially of the female gender. See the Midsummer Night's Dream of Shakespeare or even some scenes of Mac Beth. These angels of Celtic paganism use generally a female and fairylike, frightening, magic. The magic is as natural for the bansidh as breathing for the ordinary man.

Ireland distinguishes two kinds of beings from the Other World. The first one is like the girl of the sidh, who comes to awake Cormac. “Adracht Cormac iarsin 7 ro chuir a mertin de co n-acca da laim deis oca ingen lucair laimghead ba caeime do mhnaib betha 7 faiteran firaluinn uimpe 7 lene orsnaith fria cnes “. “ Cormac rose up and his tiredness vanishes as he saw at his right-hand side a radiant white-armed woman. Of all the women in the world, she was the fairest. She wore a beautiful tunic and next to her skin a dress of golden thread. (Forbhais Droma Damhgaire.)

An angel in the druidism , it is therefore a woman from the people of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu (bia). She is particularly tempting or particularly frightening. She is always ready to become, or excessively tempting, or excessively frightening. She appears during a walk, of a hunt party or a war, always about in the same way, sitting or standing on a small hill. Man recognizes her because of her dress, her pin and her diadem. She also appears in dreams , or in bird shape. She disappears by returning under ground or water. It also happens that she enters a house quite simply and takes there the place of the absent house wife . Besides you are never completely sure that a

daughter of men is not a fairy. It is, we could , ready to become fairy. These apparitions are all gracious: generally they mean that the fairy in question is in love with a man. But it is necessary to be wary. The fairy, of course, fulfills the beloved man with his benefits: she cures, she brings back prosperity in the house, she generates heroes. But the beloved man is always more or less a marked man. He lives, we could say, with a leaning towards the parallel to ours world which is called hereafter. It is for example a widower (cf. Macha’s husband). It is a hero of the clan of warriors, Ossian son of Finn, or Oscar son of Ossian.

To draw the conclusion necessary to the continuation of our research, we will examine three other examples of women from the Next World.

The first, anonymous, come in a glass boat to seek the son of a king. Having run up against the magic counterspell of a high-knower, she is forced to return to the load. But she triumphs over the magic of the high-knower, and the young man follows her willingly after having fed himself for a whole month with one apple that she had given to him: inedia (adventures of Connla).

The actors of this scene, or rather of this elementary scenario, are four.

- The woman from the Other World, who remains anonymous although it is her who calls the tune and maintains the mystery.

- Connla, the first son of the king and his presumptive heir.

- Conn, the king, his father, a well-known character in the mythical history of Ireland.

- Corann, the high-knower of the king, who is not known elsewhere.

The action proceeds in two ticks. The temptress woman is initially rejected by the incantation of the high-knower, but the latter is not sufficiently strong to repel the magic definitively or to entreat the female temptation. The banshee goes away, but this departure is only provisional: she leaves to Connla an apple, food of science and aiu (of eternity), as promise of a prompt return. She comes back at the end of a month and, this time, Conla leaves with her in her crystal coracle. He will be regarded as died or, worse, as if he had never existed. There is no longer mean to know where he is.

It does not seem, however, that people noticed a very interesting detail. There is a categorical contradiction if it is not an inconsistency; between the localization of the royal abode in Uisnech, in the theoretical center of Ireland, i.e., at a rather long distance from the Western coast of the island and the departure of Connla in a glass boat. It is well the sign there, at the same time of the ubiquity of the Next World and of the obligation of the water crossing to reach it.

The very short subparagraph specifying that “Conn of the Hundred Battles does not love druidism,” assertion in contradiction with all the attitude and the remarks ascribed to Conn in the story; and the allusion to “the righteous one” who “will annihilate the false law the high-knowers” (St. Patrick???) ; are the only interpolation of this account which is, furthermore , free from every Christianization. It is besides what makes its main interest, in addition to an archaism which appears through the extreme simplicity of the narration.

The second woman from the Next-World, Sin, chose a great king of Ireland, Muirchertach mac Erca. But she does not take him along over there: she remains near him and overstays in his residence from which she drives out the legitimate wife and children. She makes him consume, himself and his troops, wine and magic pigs, which make him get sick. Then she causes, always through magic, battalions of warriors, from stones and clods, and, little by little, she leads the monarch to the madness and a triple sacrificial death. She will be overcome nevertheless by the force of the will of St. Caimech, who constrained her to repent and ask forgiveness: the banshee is overcome by Christianity.

The third, Li Ban , are without question the most traditional of the three, she appears with a companion , in the shape of two swans attached by a silver chain. They touch down on a lake and take again their human shape then. Li Ban is the messenger of Wanda/Fand, the wife of the god-or-demon Belenus Barinthus Manannan, and she comes to ask Cuchulainn to go into the sidh. She causes in our hero a wasting disease which lasts during a year, because he wounded her with a stone of his sling at the time of her arrival when she does not play another part but that of messenger in the company of one of her maidservants.

Both banshees appear with their most primitive characteristics in an account whose own archaism is obvious.

- They come in the aspect of swans attached by a gold chain, and which land on a lake or a pond. For that they jump at the opportunity or the pretext of a bird hunting, favorite pastime of the Ulaid.

- They do not come for themselves to seek a beloved mortal , but they are sent as messengers by a deity , in fact, Wanda/Fand, wife of the god-or-demon Belenus Barinthus Manannan.

- They are not anonymous: one of them at least gives her name, Li Ban . It seems that the other in only her duplicate. In any case, her role is secondary, her presence being made necessary only by the rigidity of the topic of the two swans linked or attached by a gold chain.

It is a question for Li Ban of attracting Cuchulainn in the Next World. They theoretically need him to help the father of Wanda/Fand, Aed Abrad, (another name of Suqellos Dagda Gurgunt?) to overcome some enemies or rivals. But initially, Cuchulainn does not understand that the birds that he aims are not ordinary birds. He only succeeds in wounding one of them, and the punishment is immediate or almost: leant against a stone pillar (without any doubt a megalith) he is struck cruelly with blows of riding crop, falls asleep and gets seriously sick 1).

Everything is solved nevertheless when, from a festival of Samon (ios) to the other, appears suddenly a mysterious character who is not other than the god-or-demon Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, son of Aed Abrad .He recites some verses of a poem which exhorts Cuchulainn to come in the Other World. Cuchulainn recovers the use of the word and can finally tell what happened to him. On the advice of King Conchobar, he comes back to the stone pillar where he had seen the two young women the previous year. Li Ban then explains what she wants or, rather, what she proposes on the behalf of Wanda/Fand. Cuchulainn can hardly refuse , he will refuse even less since what is proposed to him is at the same time the love of a goddess and a fight as easy as glorious. But the great hero of Ulster is nevertheless careful; he sends his charioteer Loeg as a scout. That brings us a short description of the house of Wanda/Fand, in an island that people reach with a bronze boat.

The continuation and the end of the story do not concern us since both banshees appear there no longer. But you do not get off so lightly from a contact with the Other World, and Cuchulainn becomes mad. The intervention of the high-knowers and the use of a magical potion that erases the memory will be necessary so that our hero recovers his wits…

Conclusion. These women of the other world do not have the role to have children or to become courtesans. They are only messengers from the world of the god-or-demons (of the angels). As the etymology of the name of Dahud (dago-soitis = good magic or good witch) shows it, it was therefore a situation seen positively by their contemporaries. In that we joined the gallisenae of Pomponius Mela.

“We will repeat here what we said from the start in connection with Dahud or the Mary Morgan, namely that it is a woman of the Other World; in line of the Irish women coming, in the shape of birds (of swans!) or as women appeared suddenly out of nowhere, to seek the beloved mortal they have chosen to lead him in another World of eternal happiness. There remains the essence of this primitive data in the fact that Dahud makes a couple here with a king. We insist on the fact that if Dahud is not Melusine, it is not either a mermaid, or what India calls a nagi, but she is nevertheless a very “antiquated” woman. She belongs clearly, from the start, to this type of character in whom we saw the Celtic equivalence of the Greek concept of Eros and Psyche. But she is not only that. She matches, in the Irish version of the myth, the guardian of the well, culprit not to have taken care correctly of the closing of the sluice gates. The disadvantage is that the meaning of the myth appears to us no longer very clearly, as of the oldest Irish stage, because of the Christianization (she is baptized by St. Comgall). We do not know the why of her fault because the Christian annexation distorts the interpretation of the character of Li Ban become St Muirgen 2). Dahud has, on her Irish counterpart Irish, a serious advantage: she is free from every Christianization. Unfortunately, this exemption made her disappear completely from the hagiography and she survives only in some bits of folklore; having lost her royal rank to content herself with simple sailors that, according to the text of Le Braz, she takes immediately to their death. She is a messenger of the god-or-demons, perhaps an equivalent of the death angel. Compared to the human world, it is therefore without age nor origin. We had thought of granting to her an Indo-European relationship with the Roman Tarpeia . But Tarpeia is sensitive to the imposing presence of the Sabine king Tatius and she betrays by love. Then she is punished through her reward even: the Sabines choke her and crush her under the weight of their necklaces. There is nothing similar in the case of Dahud and the prosecution file against her remains hopelessly empty. Thus Dahud became for want of something better a great whore who takes a whole city to the very Christian punishment, of her crimes; and the saint, touching her with his crosier, curses her. In this affair, King Gradlon becomes almost a secondary character, easy victim of a guilty affection, and

that a great saint saves at the very last moment” (Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h. The legend of the city of Is).

N.B. King Gradlon should have been only the small chief of a clan or village, leading a thin troop of refugees or immigrants fleeing their country (the Great Britain in the 4th or 5th century) in the most complete destitution; and rather badly welcomed by of the rural Gallo-Romans mainly remained pagan. Or by townsmen become Christian, but being wary from these foreigners like from the plague! Mary Morgan or Dahud, like many Celtic god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, does not have true genealogy. Gradlon is only her reputed father. It is only a woman or a messenger of the god-or-demons, come to lead the king in the Next World, the city of Is, which will last until its immersion under the water in Ocean.

1.The disease is not differently described, if it is not that it is designated by the title of the story, Serglige Conculaind, which is usually translated by “Cúchulainn's Sickness,” a translation which is not very exact. Serc designates more exactly the wasting disease or the depression caused by the appearance of a young and pretty woman from the Other World; disease that the high-knowers cannot cure and which, except intervention of a god-or-demon, or of a banshee, leads directly to death. II does not here a depression, because a warrior as Cuchulainn is unable of such a mental weakness, but there are obviously physical weakening and loss of the word, which is hardly better. This disease of Cuchulainn is the consequence of his contact with the women of the Other World, because he did not understand from the start what they came to do. As soon as he has understood, his disease will cease as if by magic.

2) Feast of this very curious she saint : January 27th.

SECOND LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI .

………….The word fetish comes from the Portuguese fetisso (from Latin fatum, fairy object, bewitched). The ancient Celtic religions have an obvious fetishistic component, if it is understood through this term that people use and handle, for operative pertaining to worship purposes, natural or artificial objects (talisman as the lance of Lug, the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, the stone of Fal or Scone, the magic cauldron…) which refer ultimately to powers external for them. In their capacity of symbols and representation of the sacred, these talismans make it possible to point out concretely the presence of the Invisible one, to concentrate or deploy the forces which come from it, thanks to the existence of a support.

But when the religion is subjected to degeneration phenomena, we can arrive from that, of course, to a kind of identification of the signified power with its signifier , characteristic of the superstition: people then adore the object itself. This fetishistic component is found in various forms, even the most degenerated, in Christianity or Islam. As for the Judaism let us not speak about it! One rather speaks about it precisely!

The question of the teraphim, which are often mentioned in the Old Testament, is still very obscure at the present time; the former or modern authors who are leaning on their case being far from being of the same opinion on the esoteric meaning and the material shape of these mysterious emblems, whose origin goes a long way back.

Almost all nevertheless insisted on the divinatory role of these unknown artifacts.

The teraphim (probably some statuettes or figurines) are household idols as the question from Laban to Jacob shows it when this one flees from Paddan-Aram with his family: “Why did you steal my gods ? ” Indeed, Rachel had, without the knowledge of her husband, stolen “the teraphim that were her father's ” (Genesis 31).

Passages of the Bible speaking about the teraphim.

Genesis 31.19. Whereas Laban went to mow his ewes, Rachel conceals the teraphim of her father.

Genesis 31.34. Rachel had put them in the camel’s saddle, and had sat down on them. Laban searched the whole tent , and found nothing.

Judges 17,5. Micah dealt with a house of God; he made an ephod and some teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest.

Judges 18,14. Then the five men who had gone to spy the country of Laish, spoke, and said to their kinsmen : do you know that there is in these houses an ephod, some teraphim, a graven image as well as a molten image? Now consider what you should do.

Judges 18,17. And the five men who had gone to explore the country went up and entered the house; they took the cut image, the éphod, the téraphim, and the metal image, while the priest at the entry of the door with the six hundred men was provided with their weapons of war.

Judges 18,18. When these went into Micah's house and took the graven image, the ephod and teraphim and the molten image, the priest said to them, "What are you doing?"

Judges 18,20. The priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod and teraphimand the graven image and went among the people.

1 Samuel 15,23. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and the teraphim. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king."

1 Samuel 19,13. Then Michal took the teraphim and laid it on the bed, and put a quilt of goats' hair at its head, and covered it with clothes.

1 Samuel 19,16. When the messengers entered, behold, the teraphim was on the bed with the quilt of goats' hair at its head.

2 Kings 23, 24. Moreover, Josiah removed the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the high priest found in the house of the LORD

Ezekiel 21,21. For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim, he looks at the liver.

Hosea 3,4. For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without a king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillars and without ephod or teraphim.

Zechariah 10,2. For the teraphim speak iniquity, and the diviners see lying visions and tell false dreams; they comfort in vain. Therefore the people wander like sheep, they are afflicted, because there is no shepherd.

By enacting its second command, the sacred text of the Hebrews made a first effort to limit the worship of fetishes; but this people kept of them certain relics with the Tables of the Law, in the Ark of the Covenant, which was a combination of war or campaign altar. The word having taken the authority of a fetish is a doctrine inspiring fear, the most terrible of all the tyrants who control men.

Finally, the writing too became fetishes, more particularly those which were regarded as the words from God or of the Demiurge. For example, the Quran. The divinatory practice consisting in opening one of these sacred books; to take a look, randomly, on a passage supposed to bring an answer to the wondered questions about the destiny or the future of a project that one would like to implement; is a consequence of this fetishism in the bad sense of the word. To take an oath on a “holy book,” the Bible or the Quran, or to swear by some extremely venerated object, forms also a kind of fetishism in the bad sense of the term.

The sacred books of many religions became fetishistic prisons where the spiritual freedom of mankind is imprisoned. The fight against fetishes became itself a fetish and the command ascribed to the characters Moses or Muhammad was used to disparaging art and to blocking the admiration of the beauty and of the good.

Doctrinal fetishism always leads men to betray and to throw themselves in the clutches of the religious bigotry, fanaticism, superstition, intolerance, or the most atrocious cruelty.

To become fetishes, it was necessary that these words were regarded as dictated or inspired by God or the Demiurge (even the archangel Gabriel in the case of the Quran). The invocation of writings that people suppose to be of divine origin, directly or indirectly, resulted in establishing for ever and ever the authority of Moses, the Church, and the Quran.

The result of this accumulation of fetish writings that various religions hold for sacrosanct books is not only that the faithful believe that all what appears in these books is true, but also that these books contain all the truth of the world. If one of these sacred books speaks about the Earth as a stretch of flat ground ; then, during generations and generations, millions or billion men and women, besides normally intelligent; will refuse to accept the idea that our planet is crundnios (round).

[I no longer remember from whom I borrowed these few remarks. Arthur Weigall and his Paganism / Christianity perhaps].

N.B. On the political level, the insignia of the priestly and royal offices too were finally considered as fetishes. The concept of fetish went through many phases of development, from the clan to the tribe, from suzerainty to sovereignty, totem to flag. Some fetish kings “of divine right” ruled, and many other forms of government of this kind rose. The men also made parliamentary democracy a true fetish.

We don’t consider that the opinion of a man taken separately has any authority, was he a wise or a very great man; but when many have the same idea, so poor it is, these reactions of a very big stupidity, or completely incoherent and based on much more ignorance than information, then become the standard and the higher referee of all the debates. What the Romans summarized as follows: vox populi vox dei.

There exist generally accepted ideas based at least on appearances: to believe that the Earth is flat and that the sun rises, for example. Whereas the Earth is roughly speaking round and goes around the sun.

But our time increased on the phenomenon. False ideas (sophisms), even not in conformity with the appearances, but developed in all the possible and conceivable ways by the so-called elites (journalists, film producers, rabbis, priests, pastors, Imams, writers and, of course, politicians in search of voters, etc., etc. the list of these opinion makers is far from being exhaustive, see Noam Chomsky); end up having the force of the obviousness which is no longer discussed (what it is called the right thinking, the political correctness or “dominant ideology”).

EIGHTH LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

PELAGIAN ANALYSIS OF THE JEWISH MYTHS.

............... One of our high-knower, hidden under the habit of monks, Pelagius, although copiously insulted by the Christians of the kind St. Jerome and his sweeping racist judgments (stuffed with porridge, Latin pultibus praegravatus); was led in his time to highlight again, in his analysis of the Judeo-Christian errors , two lifelong truths.

The “sin” made by our ancestor to all (Adam) according to the Hebrews – in reality by Eve in this Eastern myth - was attributable to this first man personally and not to mankind. This Toutadis Pater had been born mortal and what he did was punished, not by death, since he was already mortal, but by his passage from a state of paradisiac animal nature to that of the civilization, in other words, of a fallen, torn, suffering, mutilated, disqualified, human nature. This first man, according to Hebrews, was free. He made a bad choice perhaps, but it is not to us to take responsibility for that.

The good or the evil for which we may be praised or blamed comes from our acts and is not born with us, in no way … We are begotten without sin just as much as without merit, and before the action of our personal will, there is in Mankind only what God put in it.

END OF THE PELAGIAN ANALYSIS OF THE JUDEO-ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN MYTH OF THE ORIGINAL SIN.

This analysis by Pelagius goes very far, of course, but remains overall in the logic of what the high-knowers thought: among Celts, the dualism is almost non-existent or at least very relative, and the good and evil problem does not arise at all in these terms. At the limit , there is no sin. God, which put in Man what is in his image, put in him, on par, good and evil. Therefore God is at the same time good and bad.

This druidic view of the things (Weltanschauung) consequently contributes to moderating the crushing judgment we could have on our faults or those of others. It avoids satanizing History as Christians and Muslims do, who see everywhere the work of the demons or evil soul/minds (Matthew 6,13; 25,41; Mark 1,13; Luke 22,31; John 13, 27…). It is therefore a clear refusal of moral dualism, a negation of the Christian and Muslim Manicheism. God could not tolerate such an injustice therefore there is no original sin. Consequently, and it is the second fundamental truth “rediscovered ” by Pelagianism: the Gdonios (the Man) is entirely free, his only limits are these of nature, and the blooming of his soul depends on him only, with some exceptions.

All the schizophrenia of a Christian bishop is necessary to find “naive,” by being based only on the racist insults of St. Augustine, the apologist of the anti-Donatist suppression (and the god-or-demons know that the suppression of these however sincere Christians was wild); such an approach of the things. It is true that what St. Paul said of it (Romans 7,15 to 20): “I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do,” resembles more the failed self-analysis of a clinical and pathological case of schizophrenia or psychosis; than a serious philosophical reflection about wisdom.

But let us linger a little, precisely, over the case of Saint Paul and of his pseudo-letter to the Corinthians (pseudo-letter bus it is to be in reality three or four different epistles amalgamated by Bishop Marcion). I know well that Paul is a moron and that he has nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with the true Christianity which is… (See your bishop, in Rome or elsewhere, to know more about what true Christianity is;) but what he wants to say when he writes (8,5, and 10, 20-21): “And there are indeed many “gods” and many “lords”???????? I don’t desire that you would have fellowship with demons ????????

Gods symbolize the Perfections and the Personalities of the Divinity being expressed on the Earth and in the Universe. Being located out of time and space, he doesn’t communicate directly with the men, the mortals. He passes through the half-god-or-demons, such Hesus Cuchulainn or the Celtic Hercules called Ogmius.

THIRD LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

LITTLE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DRUIDIC SCHOOLS.

Theism………..

Consist in believing in a personal God or Demiurge who directs the world and intervenes directly in the life of the men, very precisely the one “who makes die and who makes live.” He rules over Nature and Mankind.

The following text is quoted to justify this option Judeo-Islamic-Christian option: “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a small coin? But not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father knowing about it already (Matthew 10.29).

But the words or the idea “without your Father knowing about it already ” do not appear in the biblical text: they were added by the translator. The text in reality says, literally: “But not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father.” What does not mean that God wanted or allowed that they fall, but that God was well present when they fell. Just as a visitor can be present when a patient dies in a hospital.

Specialists also quote: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures ” (psalm XXIII).

The Judeo-Islamic-Christians deduce from it that nothing nor nobody can block the intentions of a “ Almighty” God. But this word is not in the Bible. When it thus is translated, in the Old Testament, the Judeo Islamic Christian people are quite bold, because the Hebrew word thus conveyed , generally “El Shaddai,” is not clear and does not mean in any case “Almighty.” In the New Testament, the title “ Almighty” appears nowhere, except in the Apocalypse: “pantocrator.” But that does not mean, however, that God can do all what he wants and in any time.

God or the Demiurge listens to the prayer of men and, if he wants it, turns the tide, says the thought theist.

These asking prayers exist. On the prayer registers which are sometimes placed at the disposal of the believers to the door of the churches, we can read precise requests:

- “Give me back the love of John, Peter or Paul.”

- “Get the move of my husband in London, Paris, or Singapore.”

The idea, it is that you leave to the providence of God or of the Demiurge your needs and your concern, sure and certain that he will deal with them, since he takes care of men and that he listens to their applications.

This Weltanschauung (way of seeing the things) does not summarize the suffering of the innocent ones and of the non-fulfilled prayers.

The newspapers of Nashville have, some time ago, given much echo to the following anecdote.

After the car crash, the singer Barbara Mandrell had been able to escape without too much damage, in 1984, President Reagan had congratulated her husband by adding: “God watched out for her”; while forgetting that the other motorist involved in the accident, had lost his life in it! Strange design of the divine providence, which supposes that God or the Demiurge would not have wished also to protect the other motorist! It left more than the one perplexed one.

We uns druids we categorically refuse such an egoistically childish theology.

Because the question arises always at the time of disasters which made innocent victims in the hundreds, thousands, and even millions: “Where was divine providence therefore? Where was God

while Nazis massacred Jews?? ” If it is true that God is good, that he fulfills prayers and intervenes in the life of the world, how can he allow this suffering, why he did not prevent these mass crimes, if he can do it?

Certain theologians present sometimes these catastrophes as punishments deserved by the misconduct of men. Televangelists thus explained that the attack against the World Trade Center and the earthquakes which occur here and there are the punishment that God inflicts to men; who do not oppose sufficiently homosexuality or what they call the other sexual “vices”. What also implies that God is interested particularly in sexual questions!

Certain rabbis, in the same way, presented the hell experimented by the Jewish community from 1939 to 1945, in Europe ( between 5 million to 6 million dead , 1,5, million dead for the only einsatzgruppen ) as a punishment of the infidelity of Israel.

Another televangelist said that it was convinced to get through prayer that God diverts a cyclone of his television broadcast station. This assertion caused much emotion in his neighbors, who then pointed out that the cyclone would come in this case directly on them!

We uns druids we categorically refuse such an egoistically childish theology.

Isn’t it written that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends ( beneficial) rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5,45)?

God or the Demiurge does not turn the tide at our request. The prayer does not persuade God or the Demiurge to intervene in the matters of mankind.

In theism, God or the Demiurge is in relation to the world, the mankind , the animals, the plants, as a gardener in front of his garden or a general facing his army. He orders, intervenes, modifies.

Some other designs of the role of God or of the Demiurge in the world now.

Pantheism.

All is God . God is life. God (or the god-or-demons)form (s) the Spirit of Nature. He is the soul/mind of the wind which blows, of the water which runs. He is the soul/mind t of men, animals, plants. God is inside, in our souls or in our minds, rather than in the sky. He is the blood which runs in our veins, the breath which goes up, in us, the creating dynamism, the Holy Spirit. But it is more than our souls, he is also outside ourselves. He leads us to leave ourselves, our beaten tracks and our habits.

Panentheism. The inventor of the term, Karl Christian Krause (Vorlesungen über das System der Philosophy 1828) wanted to make it a middle course between pantheism and theism. The name means “All is in God.” But without being God himself. The visible and invisible finite beings are modes which “express” the High Substance, but which do not exhaust it. There is therefore a part of this high Substance which is beyond the expressed modes. The high Substance is richer than what appears of it in its modes. It is immanent and transcendent at the same time with respect to its modes. For panentheists, God is more than the sum of the things he contains, just as the man is not reduced to the whole of the physiological elements which compose him. God and Nature are not identical, contrary to pantheistic theories. The divine perfection implies not only immutability and independence, but also a perfect mutability, as well as reactivity. God is therefore affected by what occurs in the world, while remaining paradoxically absolute, eternal and immutable.

Even if for Krause God or the Demiurge remains personal and that we can pray him, all that differs much from the traditional theist design according to which God or the Demiurge does what he wants, at will, like an Eastern despot.

In the panentheism, God or the Demiurge is in us, he is not without us, but he is more than us.

Not only neither in us, we uns the men: we are not in the center of the (pro) creation. Look around you: everything moves, grows, or becomes more and more complex. We unceasingly attend the revival of men, animals, plants, of the whole nature. Everything rises, develops, then disappears to leave room to other movements. We stand up in the morning, despite all what awaits us as concern in the day (I think particularly of those who awake in the morning in a bed of prison, of hospital)… And we draw in us a constantly renewed courage. From where all that comes if not from the very source of life ?

And if you do not like to use the word “God” because of all the ponderousness it conveys, antipathetic churches, strict education in childhood, bad example of dominating believers, deep stupidity of arguments, don’t say “God,” vocabulary has no importance. Say “Nature” or “Cosmos” if you prefer, with an upper-case n or c (although he is more than Nature or Cosmos). It is the same thing. But don’t say that you are not sensitive to this big flood of life which surrounds us and in which we are

immersed, of which we are a piece, the vital impetus at work in us and in the world! Of course there is a creating dynamism, a force of life for us, animals and plants!

There cannot be a creator sitting outside the world, outside ourselves. As a Roman super Emperor looking down at all things and from whom, we uns miserable little worms, would try to get some favor sometimes! God or the Demiurge is not “elsewhere,” he is not “in the heaven,” he is not “completely different,” he is the dynamism inside mankind and world.

God or the Demiurge does not fall on us from outside, it goes up, in us, from inside. He is present in the life of our world, he is the engine of it, its soul, he is the impetus of it. And not only of us but also of animals, plants, and perhaps also of minerals. He is as essential to world life as the engine to the “life” of a car. It takes part in all that occurs, in all realities against which we run up unceasingly, and first in ourselves. He acts in all that moves: nothing escapes his action, just as nothing escapes from the sun rays or from the air which surrounds us.

He should not be sought in “miracles,” behind extraordinary and supernatural things, turning the tide from outside. He is met on the contrary in the daily life, the usuality, the normality. Everything comes from him, every life is through him. Nothing is more normal than to believe in him.

God or the Demiurge is not “Almighty” insofar as it is clear that other powers that his are at work in the world, starting from ours: other actions compete with his will even are opposed to it.

- We can, of course, say to him : “Feed those who are hungry,” but if we accept an economic system where the Stock Exchange in Wall Street, London or Tokyo, causes a drop in the exchange rate of the food raw materials which make the poor countries live; God or the Demiurge cannot modify himself the Stock exchange prices so that they arrive at the level necessary to the survival of his children, our brothers in Africa or South America.

- A student can, of course, pray to find a not too expensive but nevertheless well, room, ; if the room owners prefer to keep them free or rent 9 m2 without hot water at a foolish price; God or the Demiurge will not multiply the student rooms and I do not believe that he will support the one who is the member of such community rather than of such other.

- God or the Demiurge always wishes that parents raise their children well and contribute to their blossoming , but his will can be tragically thwarted by a motorist who chooses drinking and running stoplights.

God or the Demiurge is therefore the vital impetus in us, an inner creating dynamism. He is in us, he is not without us, but he is more than us. He leads us outside ourselves, towards the others and urges us to surpass ourselves. He is not only the God or Demiurge of mankind: the men, with their unworthy faults and their good deeds, with their faults and their qualities, are not his only concern, far from it. He is the God or the Demiurge of the Bitus or of the entire Universe, including men, of course; but also animals, so many and so various, so beautiful and so astonishing; plants, so splendid they also and naturally also minerals, mountains and plains, planets, stars and suns. Our prayer cannot either change the intention of God or of the Demiurge like if God or the Demiurge had unwillingness, he was distracted his attention was to be drawn. Our prayer makes us take part in the creating dynamism of God or the Demiurge; it roots us in his eternal (pro) creating activity

The reverend Gilles Castelnau being Christian, he adds in his article the following considerations of which each one will think what he wants, as for what is previous besides.

Let us be careful , especially while speaking about the tragic death of Jesus on the cross, not to let believe that it is God or the Demiurge who would have wanted it for paying the sin of mankind. We understand well that the first Christians were led to compare the, unjust and unacceptable, execution, of Jesus, with the sacrifices of innocent animals which were daily celebrated in the Jewish temple of Jerusalem like in all the pagan temples of the Roman Empire. But it is in reality only in the Middle Ages that St. Anselm, then archbishop of Canterbury, understood this death, in a very feudal way besides, as an offering intended to repair the offended honor of God or the Demiurge, and to repurchase his benevolence!

In what God or the Demiurge shows mercy in this case? He is worried especially about his interests as well as his glory. He sends his Son to a horrible death to satisfy his honor. And he forgives only when he has been compensated through this killing of a man. We are there very far from gratuitous

salvation. In what the torment of an innocent instead of a culprit does satisfy justice? Isn't this on the contrary a scandalous injustice?

Because what natural law requires is that a bad action is punished if we believe what the Senchus Mor confesses in all letters while asking to do the opposite (Intud i ngeindtleacht gnim olc mad indechur : there is strengthening of paganism if an evil deed is avenged).

However the Christian God or Demiurge requires nothing, neither ransom, neither expiatory sacrifice, nor alternative sentences. All that does not interest him. He expects that people open themselves to his word, that they let them be inspired, converted, changed, led by it. God or the Demiurge seeks to win the hearts, the wills, to convince. Patiently, gradually, God or the Demiurge acts in Mankind so that it moves forwards, approaches him, and that the world becomes better.

The judgment and the rejection of his Christ are a failure for him who had been implied in his ministry. His expectation was disappointed. Jesus encountered a sharp hostility. His person and his message were rejected. The evening of the Good Friday, God is an overcome person, and not a sovereign who would have got the compensation he demanded.

The Christian faith it is not therefore to admit the existence of a supernatural celestial being remaining in a very high heaven and from whom men could get particular interventions by suitable prayers!

The Christian faith consists in being rooted in this life force which is in us, which is not without us, but which is more than us. Force of life stronger than death. God of Easter!

St. Anselm worked out his idea of substitute sacrifice of Christ (“substitute” means that Jesus would have replaced us to undergo a punishment that God or the Demiurge was to inflict to the men, because of their sins) because he considered that the fundamental purpose of human life was to manage to live with God or the Demiurge in heaven. And that we could not enter the house of God or the Demiurge without being purified of every fault, an amnesty (expensively paid by Jesus) was in a way needed .

But when the Gospels are read, it is well seen that it is not so that Jesus saw the will of God or the Demiurge. For Jesus, God or the Demiurge is the vital impetus animating each man to make him live most happily possible in greatest possible blossoming on the earth, the earth “which is sometimes so beautiful.”

The salvation that God or the Demiurge gives us consists in living our life of man joyfully, without being particularly concerned about our qualities or our flaws , of our good or ill deeds.

Reverend Gilles Castelnau, in connection with panentheism.

N.B. Commentary. In connection with the flaws, it would be more relevant of speaking about manufacturing defects because we are there still in the Judeo-Islamic-Christian and therefore creationist design of a god having created the world to play with men * ..... until the day when he will weary of it and break his toy.

* Out of love Christians say. But it is the same thing.

FIFTH LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

CANTAMANTALOEDISM.

…….There are two categories of religions: the first category gathers the theistic in a stricter sense of the word, religions, like the old Greek religion, the Judaism, the Roman religion, Christianity or Islam. This group affirms as fundamental belief the existence of creating god (s) organizing the primeval chaos (tohu wa bohu in Hebrew).

The second category gathers non-theistic spiritualities, like Buddhism or certain branches of Hinduism. As strange as that can appear, druidism is not found at the sides of the Greek or Christian polytheism, but between Hinduism and Buddhism. There is neither God or Demiurge, neither Creator, nor Almighty one: because in the final analysis, each one is oneself a creator. It is indeed possible to reach the Divinity only through its manifestations, of which each one can give rise to a particular god-or-demon. In the druidic polytheism , you choose a preferred god-or-demon (it is the henotheism of Mug Ruith) whom you venerate more than each other, because of the fact that he wakes up in you the echo most favorable to our personal comprehension of the Divinity. However, you don’t forget that there exist other god-or-demons of whom you know that they are, in spite of their foreign nature, some aspects of the Divinity as legitimate as that you chose by yourself and for yourself. It is only starting from the god-or-demon that you are able to perceive that you can rise towards the non-dual Vastness, and towards what you believe to be a “identification” with the Absolute Immanent; identification also still approximate and, in a stricter sense of the word, illusory, besides.

In reality, through this single worship that Christianity and Islam project, it is a universal domination which is pursued under the worst disguises. “And there may spring from you a nation who invite to goodness, and enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency. Such are they who are successful » (Holy Quran chapter III, 104). ). “ And fight them until fitna *is no more, and religion is all for Allah” (Holy Quran chapter 8 verse 39)

* According to the majority of the commentators in this verse it is necessary to understand by fitnah, some shirk or kufr. Let us dare the translation “heresy.” For more details about the meaning of this word see our essay against Islam.

The “monotheist” people consequently becomes the new “chosen people” which, necessarily, must fight the false gods and bring the “good news” of one revelation, outside which there is no salvation. Here are the doors opened to fanaticism and intolerance, persecutions, excommunications, religion wars (Arabic fitnah).

For the druidic polytheism , on the other hand, there do not exist false god-or-demons. There are only true god-or-demons, even Jesus or Muhammad are like gods, and it is impossible to conceive that a path cannot lead to Absolute Immanent. At least this is there the theory or the logic of a system, which leads naturally to tolerance, to the respect of others, the absence of missionary spirit.

The natural tolerance of druidism (cantamantaloedism) does not mean therefore, of course, desertion of the truth which is perceived, even a renunciation to the taste of formulating it in the most precise and most rigorous way which is. It is without relationship with the syncretism or the otherworldliness at all costs in the field of the ideas. The existence of various Schools within it is on this subject very clear. Though some of these philosophical systems are more or less complementary, it is there not easily reconcilable positions. What relationship between the primitive atheism of the Galicians (Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god … Strabo, Geography III, 4,16) and the polytheism of the late Irish tradition, except this short mention in the Pharsalia by Lucan: To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know .

These positions are irreducible to each other, but, if they are all admitted by the true druidism, it is that none of them is perceived as expressing absolute truth. They all are only “points of view” on the world. There does not exist point of view making it possible to contemplate the world in its totality. The true high-knowers are quite aware of the fact that there does not exist religion or of metaphysics which can be another thing that only a point of view. But, once again, it is not a question to say that we can superimpose a point of view on another one, that all have the same value, that we may in a way exchange the points of view. Each point of view in itself is true absolutely.

If, at the time of a travel to Paris, from the top of the Eiffel Tower, I contemplate the capital of the French Republic, I get a real and indisputable view of the town. If I turn towards the west, I get another view of Paris, just as real and indisputable. And so on. All these views are real and indisputable, but only from the adopted point of view. If I claim that one of these points of view corresponds to the whole view, I am mistaken and mislead others. If, admitting the equal truth of the four points of view , I imagine that it is possible to replace one by the other; to establish an equivalence between the point of view on the east of the town and the point of view on the west, I am also mistaken and I deceive others. I cannot see Paris at one time. Nobody can see Paris at one time. I can therefore have on Paris only a point of view or a succession of points of view. Each one of them is necessary and true, each one complementary to the other, but no one cannot replace the other.

Here is the attitude of the true druidism with regard to the various religious Schools which can exist in the world.

Our druidism is incompatible with the activist and aggressive atheistic materialism, but it is perfectly compatible with the atheistic spiritualism or the agnosticism having the tact to be discreet.

Each “point of view” on the world, each philosophical system, defines itself starting from its method. The method of observation of the phenomena, peculiar to the scientific process , can never come, for example, to a theist conclusion or a grasping of the Absolute Immanent . It is a quantitative accumulation of facts, progressing ad infinitum, but which will never be able to integrate in this infinite and quantitative progression a synthetic and qualitative intuition, otherwise than as an assumption, without denying itself.

Such is, however, the mix-up that those who speak about scientific religion or religious science keep. For the true high-knowers, if a religion is scientific, it is consequently no longer a religion, and if a science is religious, it is no longer itself a science. That does not mean that science and religion cannot be complementary nor that , by a method owing nothing to the observation of phenomena, we cannot come to religious conclusions of a value similar to that of the scientific conclusions. Although we can think in this case, that they are not the same methods which will lead to a perception of the Divine one in its impersonal form, as those which will lead to a perception of the Divine one i n its personal form. We should quite simply not confuse levels and methods, and believe that we can come to an unchanging and total vision of the things through a simple human approach.

SIXTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE MENAPIAN FOREST.

………People too often mix up atheism and spirituality without creating God or Demiurge. Although spiritualism and atheism can seem to be two antinomic concepts, they are not necessarily so. Pierre Lance in his time spoke about atheistic spiritualism. Spirituality without personal creator God or Demiurge can exist.

The philosophical thought does not lead necessarily to atheism, it can also be directed towards skepticism or agnosticism, which quite simply notes the impossibility of coming to a conclusion about the existence of God or of the Demiurge or about his non-existence.

If we consider atheism as the negation of the existence of creating god-or-demons (of demiurges), this negation prevents in no way the belief in a certain form of spirituality. Religions whose dogmas do not use the concept of divinity can, to a certain extent, being regarded as atheistic. For example, the naturalist Pantheism or the Buddhism.

Buddhism is atheistic if you understand by theos a personal God or Demiurge, creator of all things, as it is defined by the majority of the religions of one Book, including Islam. A creating god-or-demon (demiurge) is in no way mentioned, so much in Buddhist philosophy than in the practices of this religion resulting from the knowledge and the wakening of a man: Buddha. There is well a not-born, a not-compound, but it is not creating. The absence of creating deity is not a postulate, but the consequence of the principle: “Nothing is without cause and nothing is its own cause.” Buddhism can well be considered therefore, from this point of view, as an agnostic even atheistic philosophy. To note: in fact, Buddha never came to a conclusion about the existence or the inexistence of God or of the Demiurge. For him the main thing was that his disciples release themselves from the suffering and leave the infernal cycle of life and death, or reincarnation, in short, of samsara.

For a Western mind, the question of the definition of the divinity is in the foreground. For lack of a homogeneous definition of the divinity; it is impossible to decide categorically if the Eastern “religions” (like Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism or Vedanta) are, initially some religions (specialists sometimes prefer to regard them as philosophies), then atheistic or not.

What is certain, it is that their design of the absolute immanent coincides in no way with that of the “personal god-or-demon” of the religions of the Book, and that they do not put forward higher beings, capable of influencing the life in this world. The spiritual beings of the Eastern religions are more often models to be reproduced than beings capable of acting. Those who regard these religions as atheistic, classify them in spiritual atheism as well as shamanism or naturalist pantheism. However, the religions in question often refuse this classification.

According to Strabo, certain Celts and particularly the Galicians in Spain were atheistic. Is this possible or is it rather a lack of nuance in the thought of Strabo, unable to understand the subtleties of certain druidic Schools?

N.B. Certain high-knowers go even as far as to think that this ULTIMATE INCLUDING is unknowable, that it is useful for nothing to go and search or research this Absolute Immanent , it is or will be still, inaccessible to our poor human intellects.

In any case here the quotation in question of Strabo. “Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night ” (Strabo, Geography III, 4,16).

It is necessary to distinguish well atheism, agnosticism and free thinking.

Agnosticism is philosophical doctrines which postulate that all that is located beyond the materially experimental data is unknowable. Whence the impossibility of affirming or of denying the existence of God or of the Demiurge.

A freethinker tries to be detached from any dogma and not to have prejudices. The free thought is neither an ideology nor a dogma. The free thinking is initially a revolt, a calling into question; the free thinking is a refusal of all dogmatism. See the life and the work of the high-knower John Toland.

There is a priori no reason that a freethinker is atheist: its possible atheism must be confirmed by his reflection. Lastly, though the majority of the Western atheists adhere to the scientific designs, it is not either obligatory.

Various atheisms.

The definition of atheism is simple, atheism, it is the absence of belief in the gods or demons. But the reasons which justify this absence of belief can be very diverse, and led to consider quite distinct atheisms.

Scientific atheism.

The atheistic scientist, being based on certain results or data of experimental sciences, thinks that man and woman are part of nature since million years; that the genealogies of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, then from Abraham to Joseph, and finally to Muhammad, not the heroic fantasy of the Milesian legend in Ireland; are to arrange in the department of the mythologies and primitive cosmology models, or concepts without any base other than the belief. Cicero calls to mind besides that already in his time nobody really believed that Atlas carries the vault of heaven on his shoulders.

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SIXTH LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

“ Some authors say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night” (Strabo, Geography III, 4,16). A nameless God or Demiurge … Same intellectual reflex as with the El Elyon of the Bible.

In the south of the Pyrenees, Celtic spirituality therefore ranged from the atheistic spiritualism of my old Master Pierre Lance to the agnosticism.

As we already had the opportunity to say it, the only thing which is incompatible with the life in our community it is the aggressive and activist atheistic materialism. Atheistic spiritualism as well as agnosticism are not excluded from it. Let us say only that they are rather logically relegated nevertheless somewhat marginalized because our spiritual research is not a vague aspiration towards God or the Divine one. It requires a total and constant commitment , a without a hitch self-discipline.

Atheistic spiritualism or agnosticism we have said. Nothing is stable and everything flees. But nothing is lost nor is really created, all changes. The Higher Reality, itself, is One, Permanent and Timeless. Some high-knower go as far as to think that this “ ULTIMATE INCLUDING » is unknowable, that it is useless to go in search or research for this Immanent one, it is therefore and will always be, inaccessible to our poor human intellects.

Others think that to experiment it, it is enough to be freed from the usual conditioning which shape us. Such is the purpose of every quest for the Grail, of every spiritual research, whatever the followed path. That is an extremely long process, which can require several lives in the most difficult cases (bacuceos and even seibaros).

Certain shamanic experiments teach us that there can be an absolute identity between the anamone and the awenyddia; two words that are translated theoretically by individual soul and cosmic soul, for lack of adequate words in our current language and of which here a more precise approach.

The ancients often distinguished several types of soul which are today for us, modern men, become incomprehensible. There was for example the soul= vital breath ( anatlo).

We call today awentia or awenyddia the pure soul in opposition to the matter. Especially considered on the general or cosmic level. When it is individualized in a permanent way, when it is for example the human soul, we call it anamone.

For the ancient high-knowers on the other hand, the anamone was the part pure soul of the human being. The anamone was not regarded as immortal strictly speaking but not intended to remain in the other world much longer than the part mind or menman of the human being or gdonios. Combined with the part mind or menman of the human being, that produces what it is called anaon in Breton language, the binomial soul+mind. This anamone was not considered as immortal in a stricter sense of the word but as having to survive the body much longer than its mind or menman.

The essential difference between anamone and soul is due to the fact that the notion of anamone does not involve the idea of an individualized spiritual entity, as in the Judeo-Islamic-Christianity. It is the mind (menman) which, by its history, is in charge of this individuation. In our everyday life, we are constantly identified with our experiments and our feelings. It is therefore the ego which is the actor of these identifications.

The druidism teaches that the mind is in no way illusory, but that it is only changing and temporary. The mind is identified, generally without we realize that, with all the thoughts which occur or appear in

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our psyche. Example: a powerful impression of sadness can appear. When this state of sadness becomes dominating, the mind is what will affirm: “I am sad.” But if an intense feeling of joy appears in our psyche, when this state of joy will become dominating, then the spirit is what will affirm: “I am merry.”

In short, you should not mix-up the individual soul (anamone) and the mind (menman). The mind is shaped by our desires or our fears and it constantly interferes with the experiment of the senses, it has therefore nothing to do with the soul in the druidic meaning of the word.

SIXTH LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER AREMI.

BROAD OUTLINES OF THE DRUIDIC PHILOSOPHY.

(I think therefore I am therefore the higher Being IS.)

………..The higher Being is a verb: the verb To Be (IT IS by definition). It is awareness, because awareness is the condition of every knowledge, of all will , of every (pro) creation. The high-knowers therefore very early thought of its nature, of its attributes.

Here is what, according to Henry Lizeray, was taught among the Gnostics in the West : some doctrines exposing the formation of the world. It was to the taste of the high-knowers, skillful to grasp in the act the life manifestations. Very old, very thorough, because the first observers were less blunted than us in the study of the natural phenomena. The egg that Orpheus designated as an image of the world was celebrated there. The high-knowers called serpent egg (ovum anguinum in Latin transcription) the primeval point endowed with fertilizing and fecundating qualities, which dilates and contracts. Among Hindus, whose doctrines resembled those of the high-knowers, the non-manifested Being could be represented by a point or by a circumference. For example, similar to the letter eabadh in the Oghamic alphabet. Or even the ancient sun wheel or rouelle.

At least still according to our author (cf. the primeval Dimension of the Russian scientists: the point in an empty space. Neither height neither width nor depth). Henry Lizeray adds in his secret doctrines of druids that there was in the beginning an intelligent matter. We say “there was” because, since, this matter was distributed and individualized, had formed, on the one hand, the immortal intelligence (the soul) on the other hand the matter. Because soul and matter were separated.

As this author points it out, to say “soul and matter were separated,” it is to be Trinitarian , whereas to say “somebody or something (a being X or Y, even OIW) separated the soul from the matter,” it is to be a creationist or monotheist (N. B. To say “spirit separated from matter” on the other hand, it is to show also dualism, but relative).

Still according to Henry Lizeray (in his S.D.D.) the genesic or primigenius triad includes…

1° The uncreated one in the way of Scottus Eriugena.

2° The male, active, father, first principle, the Spirit. The spirit is what moves, and time is the difference between two changes. The spirit is what stirs up in the two meanings of the word

3° The second principle, because this first principle supposes the existence of a second, passive, female, mother, necessarily, in other words, the simple, homogeneous, universal, matter.

At least still if we understand well Henry Lizeray.

According to Simon Magus, quoted by this author in support of his thesis, the infinite power which has been, which is, which will be, is fire. This ex-disciple and unhappy competitor of the great rabbi Yehoshoua Bar Yosef known as the Nazorean, had therefore joined the druidic thought on this point since, according to Strabo, for the Gnostic sages in the West , only fire and water were important. We find a distant echo of this druidic design of the world in Gobineau, in the alchemical description that this ignored historian left us of the portal of Our Lady of Paris in 1754.

Below these three children placed in the air element; is the sphere of Water and Earth, on which feed a ram, a bull… To indicate that this universal through fire and wet one, produces all the animated beings, why its circulating influence, like the vital fire joined with the wet radical, through the salt of

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Wisdom ; is the universal seed which, acting in the various matrices, produces all the generations by putting in them the life motion (Gobineau, quoted by Henry Lizeray).

The origin of the universe (the original form, the archetype) causes endlessly the phenomenal world of the manifested forms, which have individual features as well as characteristics. This design was applied to the mechanism through which the world was, through which the god-or-demons were born. In other words, the evolution of the world was understood as reflecting a process of embodiment.

The To be God or the Demiurge One includes the multiple and founds it. The aiu (eternity) supports time. And the deities are as many powers of the Divine one which is One, just like in a company, the president delegates his powers to effective collaborators.

The One which includes and suffuses everything is not an object, with regard to which Man could break away, to state proposals “about” it. God or the Demiurge is unknowable, unless you manage to be identified yourself with the divinity by all kinds of psychic experiments. We cannot help here but quote the first sentence of the book by Calvin, published in 1541, and entitled “Institutes of the Christian religion” (chapter 1). “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”

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SECOND LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER JEAN MARTIN.

The theological content that the word “druidism” covers is more a general attitude than a precise agreement on particular dogmas.

The druidism does not abolish the suffering, it ennobles it, makes it fertile, makes it the instrument of every progress, a pledge of our future greatness; because it is also through the sacrifice that we can save but also be saved… The value of this suffering depends, of course, on the use which is done , on the virtues of which it is the opportunity: humility, self-detachment, and so on; otherwise it embitters. This is why no one has the right to be indifferent to the evils of others (the hospitality for example is a duty for any well-born Celt). Let’s not forget that the fivefold path of Druidism is, fír (truth), dliged (duty) cert (justice), aicned (natural law) and téchtae (sharing of wealth).

What the druidism preaches it is therefore ultimately the self-control, the domination of the instincts, not the suppression indiscriminately of all the desires of the human being, including in the same reprobation natural tendencies like the sexuality or the deviations of this feeling. The true high-knowers cure and improve, they purify and rectify, they do not destroy. Their goal is not the annihilation of the very life. What the high-knowers teach only, it is that the ordeal can be a way leading to the happiness in the other world… shorter than the others.

Perhaps we find widespread everywhere the belief in the immortality of the soul, in connection with the belief in the aiu (eternity) of the universe; belief in an impersonal universal Including, a Big Whole symbolized by Pariollon or cosmic cauldron; as the idea that the human soul (anamon) is only a fire tear, portion or spark of a universal soul; the Fate or Tokad (symbolized by the interventions of the Taran/Toran/Tuireann god-or-demon); but what characterizes especially this druidiaction , it is its tendency to highlight a higher being. Sometimes it subordinates it to the impersonal Principle - it will be the position, among others, of the steeped with Celtiberian spirituality branch. “Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night.” (Strabo, Geography III, 4,16). A kind of God-or-Demon that man does not name… (same intellectual reflex that with the El Elyon of the biblical Torah).

Sometimes it superimposes it over it - and it will be the attitude adopted by the branches referring only to the Irish druidism, which make Lug their higher god-or-demon).

Whatever is the origin, the diagram of production remains the same one, often borrowed from doctrines more or less related with two traditions among oldest of the druidic thought; that of the philosophical and thought out druidism, first attempt at a total description of the universe, at the same time scientific and transcendent or immanent (cruinne, Gaelic derivation from the Celtic crundnios meaning spherical, the sphericity of the Earth was also discovered by the ancient high-knowers); and that of the popular druidism, this one representing the practical aspect of that one.

The druidism is a religion which appears under the most various aspects; which go from the worship of the forces of nature or of mankind to the most demanding monism and to the belief in a universal Law which would rule over everybody and everything (Tokad: “the order of the world”); on the cosmic, social, and religious levels.

In the first case, the druidism is more a philosophy than a religion. Several systems of beliefs in the god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, are indeed tolerated in it.

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The divine one is in any living being, the Man must therefore seek by the knowledge of himself, that of the divine one present in his person, but the final point of any progression here-below remains the reintegration into the Big Whole.

On the mental level, the life of the human being is a constant succession of various states of consciousness, source of mistakes and illusions. An additional step in the way of the release from the human limits is therefore taken by the annihilation of these states of consciousness, the subject being thus able to find again his genuine essence. There exist various methods in connection with the various human temperaments and according to the needs for each one to reach this result.

This psychophysical action is carried out is either in a total immobility of body and mind, through the various meditative techniques, used for the realization of one’s true nature; or in various moves as those which were taught by the Rajah Yoga or by Bodhidharma at the other end of the Indo-European world and in China.

The druidiaction is basically made up of four main paths, being able to accelerate the reintegration of each individual in the Big Whole.

The way of the immanent and transcendent knowledge, in other words, the high-knowers and the first function (Jnana Yoga in Hinduism). This is a process which consists in distinguishing what is false from what is true, what is real from what is not such, and what is durable of what is not such . Lucan, Pharsalia I lines of verses 444-462: to you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know.

The path of action or psychophysical meditation, discipline of the body (second function): in short, the warrior training. But the primary vocation of the Celtic martial arts relates only indirectly to the fight. Their original goal is to unify the various bodily, psychological and spiritual, levels, of a human being, in order to bring him closer to the Big Whole. Celtic martial arts aim at releasing the man of his marked by suffering or insufficiency condition. Their techniques have for purpose to help the human being to free himself from the suffering, and for this reason to transcend his contingencies, by being released from the slavery of his ego.

The way of the selfless action (third function or Karma Yoga in Hinduism). Consists in fulfilling one’s family or social, obligations without expecting reward. It is a kind of perpetual sacrifice or constant encouragement to work for the Good exceeding one’s own person. Including by devoting oneself to a given profession, to carry out without being concerned with any personal profit. In the late druidism , this third way, as we have had the opportunity to say it, ended up taking precedence on the two others.

The way of the devotion and the worship of the Celtic god-or-demons (4th function), only possible exit granted to the tribes overcome by the Celts and called atectai (Bhakti Yoga for the Shudras in India). The path of Atectai was summarized in fact to worship the various Celtic deities, we would say today to find salvation in the faith in Jesus Christ or Allah. It will therefore be established then between the god-or-demon or the goddess-or-demoness, the fairy if this word is preferred, and his pious believer, a relationship from a person to a person which did not exist in the previous times, the absolute Immanent being then perceived as IMPERSONAL although being able to be personally felt. In Celtic land, this last path (that of the atectai, cf the shudras in India) quickly merged with the previous one, that of the common people of free men.

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TENTH LETTER OF THE OLD HIGH-KNOWER OF THE ARDENNE FOREST.

Meditation about the relativity of things.

……..All the writers of Antiquity agree to recognize the extreme religiosity of the Celts. To the well-known testimony of Caesar who remarks that the Celts are people very devoted to the religious practices (admodum dedita religionibus), it is necessary to add those of Titus-Livius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

Livy. Book V, 46,3: Either the Celts were stupefied at his extraordinary boldness, or else they were restrained by more or less religious feelings, for as a nation they are by no means inattentive to the claims of religion. …..

Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman antiquities. Book VII, 70,3-4: No lapse of time has thus far induced either the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Celts, the Scythians, the Indians, to forget or transgress anything relating to the rites of their gods………

The druidism is a religion which appears in the most various aspects; ranging from the worship of the forces of Nature or Mankind, to the most demanding monism and the belief in a universal Law which rules over all and everything (the Fate or “the Order of the world”); on the cosmic, social, religious, levels.

The divine one, according to the high-knower of the druidiaction , always intervenes in several forms, and therefore designates several things, which are dependent but relatively different, therefore we should not mix up. To go from the multiple towards the single one, man can take on a pantheist view and consider the divine one which is in each thing. Then, with the polytheist view, man can design the divinity in the image of the man in the shape of personal god-or-demons. It is surely the most accessible way to comprehend what is beyond us, because these humanized god-or-demons are in our image, with each characteristic related to quite concrete human set of problems. We may intercalate between the polytheism and the monism, a rather thin layer, that of the bitheism. Lastly, in the monist view, you can comprehend the Immanent/Transcendent as a Big Whole.

Of course all these points of view are compatible and it is healthy to seek to comprehend them all. We see too often “neopagans” convinced that their practice is incompatible with the monism (I do not speak, of course, of institutional monotheism or monolatry, but of experimental deism, type philosophical and thought out). We uns kuffar (adept of the shirk akbar) druids, we realize, however, through experience, that this philosophical or thought out monotheism and the pantheism, that we could believe opposite, meet. Just like it is healthy, in the feeling of the divine one within a monotheist framework, to understand that it is to be a non-personal form; and that man should not give him the image of a bearded old man with a personality or a gender; it is healthy to understand that the polytheistic deities have nothing absolute. Even if the god-or-demons of the polytheism are a great source of various lessons, they should always be put into perspective, not to be taken for absolute truths. But in such a case, of course, it should then be understood that the truly religious mind is radically different from the belief in a god or in a religion. The religious or mystical mind is psychologically freed from the dominant culture of the society. A deeply religious mind lives in the feeling of the presence of the sacred. He needs neither the recourse to belief, nor the recourse to martyrdom like our Muslim brothers of the type Al Hallaj (857-922). The ones wear a white flax gown, the others a wool gown. In a sense John Toland was not wrong while tackling the question in his pantheisticon.

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The radicalness of the approach here is based on the complete destitution. The thought can project all that it wants. It can create God or the Devil as well as to deny him. Each one can invent God/Evil or destroy him according to one’s inclinations, pleasures and pains. Therefore, as long as the thought proves running , never a man will discover this thing which is beyond time. God or the Demiurge, or reality, can be discovered only when every thought ceases.

What remains then? The comprehension of the psychological time generated by the thought. To experiment what is beyond time, to feel it, we should of course understand the process of time. The mind results from the time, it is built on the echoes of a recent past. It is possible to be freed from this multiplicity which is not other than the time result It is without question a very serious problem, and it is not a question here to believe or not to believe. Belief and t refusal to believe fall both under ignorance, whereas the fact of understanding the time-related nature of the thought brings us freedom , which only makes discovery possible.

The thought cannot thus transcend itself. How thought could cease? The thought ends only when we understand its whole process, and to understand these mechanisms of the thought, it is necessary to know oneself. The thought, it is the ego, the thought, it is the word which is identified as “I.” In the very comprehension of the thought process, the intelligence is put in a discovery state. This state of discovery is at the same time a quiet clearness and a motionless passion, a passion without reason, what supposes a very high level of sensitivity.

This religious mind is completely different from the mind which leads the upholders of an orthodoxy, or of an unspecified fundamentalism. The religious spirit of a fundamentalist is blind to the beauty; the upholder of orthodoxy is not aware of the universe in which he lives; of the beauty of the universe, beauty of the earth, beauty of the hill, of a tree; of the smile which lights up a harmonious face. For him beauty is only temptation; for him, the beauty, it is the woman he must avoid at all costs in order to find God. Such a mind is not religious in the druidic sense of the word since it is not sensitive to the world which surrounds it – to its beauty, to its ugliness, by time.

N.B. We must not be sensitive only to the beauty; it is also necessary to be sensitive to misery, to the dirtiness, to the faults of the human mind. The sensitivity supposes a global approach, which does not have a single or exclusive orientation.

Consequently, it becomes easy to understand that what men disfigured in all the ways in the concept of God or of Demiurge, is nothing else the Life itself. The Life is God or the Demiurge expressed in a myriad of shapes. The Immanent Absolute is the immutable one which stands over the source of the Manifestation of the relative one. God or the Demiurge is a concept which designates the power which, not ceasing being coherent with itself, creates, supports, and absorbs, every relative demonstration. Paradox of the paradoxes, the ultimate reality, the universal Including , holds the opposites together: the always of the aiu (of the eternity of the universal including everything), and the change of the always changing in the relative one. The Including is on the border of what our thought can comprehend, because the intellect cannot understand that the immanent absolute and the relative one are ultimately the same thing. They form a torc. These are the two buffers of the same torc. And when they touch that made sparks.

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EIGHTH LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

“TRUTH IN HIS HEART, STRENGTH IN HIS ARMS AND THE ART OF SPEAKING WELL” such is the ideal of the former druidism (triad reported by Cailte answering a question from St. Patrick) in the Irish text entitled “the colloquy of the Ancients (Acallam na senorach).

You respect me I respect you!

WE RESPECT OTHER RELIGIONS EXACTLY INSOFAR THEY RESPECT US AND OUR SPIRITUALITY (elementary application of the well-known pagan principle of reciprocity).

……………Every religion deserves the respect in spite of its errors, if it shows itself respectful of the others. Alas, that never was much the case of the various monolatries called Judaism, Islam or Christianity.

Now what attitude pagans may have with respect to Christians and Christianity as a whole? Is Christ a god-or-demon like the others?

Our position is very simple!

Everything had started well in the beginning, considering the careful concept of unknown god-or-demon among the pagans, and there was nothing shocking for them in the concept of embodied, died and resurrected, god or son of a god. It was the case of many gods in paganism. Adonis and Mithra in the East, for example.Nothing….. except that Christianity developed starting from Judaism, monolatrous religion known for its religious intolerance and its superiority complex (the concept of people chosen by the only true God or Demiurge and, therefore, very corollary, that of impurity of the non-Jews or Goim). Christianity therefore inherited all the faults specific to the (Pharisee) Jewish ideology of its time, more especially as it was itself victim (rejection of all who were not Pharisee, expulsion of the notsrim from synagogues, birkat ha minim etc., casuistry of the Talmud worthy of the most muddled Jesuitism ….)

It was necessary to await for Islam to have a religious totalitarianism more locked than that one (cf surah 6 verse 68, surah IV verse 40).

Because the fact is that people never killed as much in the name of God or of the religion than with these so-called monotheisms of love and mercy or concrete humanism; it should be there besides a constant source of shame for those who align themselves with this tradition.

New Testament (Acts of Apostles 17,16-34) gives clearly of this (failed) meeting between Paul and paganism an unacceptable view. Paul’s remarks are inadmissible and appear completely sectarian. May we tolerate intolerance? What freedom can we grant to the enemies o freedom? The errors and the lies of Paul disfigured for a long time Christianity, by reducing the sacred to the only suffering of a Jewish crucified.

The question is therefore: how to behave facing this religion? Do we have to reject it? To curse it? To scorn it ?

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Well, no! Christ is a god-or-demon deserving as much respect than Abellio, Ogmius and all the others. Let those who feel in harmony with him, pray him ! No constraint as regards religion! This said with no taqiyya !

Our mistrust towards Christianity comes only from the fact that this religion claims to be the only possible path and denies to the others the freedom to practice or believe, effectively but otherwise. However the Christlike image will take again its true meaning only as from the moment when this Christ has reinstated the place which is his; a savior god-or-demon, a peaceful deity like the others (just oblivious of his origin, and a little lost in worlds which are not his it is true); but will we be able to still speak about a Christian God or Demiurge in this case? Adonis and Tammuz (Dumuzi) are not far, neither Mithra.

Besides the fact of changing one’s religion brings generally nothing better; it is not a proof of intelligence since faith has nothing to do with reason, the ultimate Mystery is not worried by the name which is given to him or by the rituals through which he is honored. The best way of honoring him consists in living one’s life in respect or dignity. To do differently would be to lack of fidelity regarding oneself as one’s soul (but we must be Sinn Fein). As regards spirituality, somebody can neither should be constrained to act against one’s consciousness, nor prevented from acting, within right limits, according to one’s own consciousness, privately as publicly, alone or associated with others (worships). This right comes under the obviousness as regards the spirituality or the very nature of the human person, whose dignity (nemet nature) involves that it joins the divine truth freely; but also under the rectu adgenias (Gaelic recht aicnid) , this is why it remains even in those who hardly satisfy the moral obligation to seek the truth then to join it. This effective right to such a religious liberty is not, however, to mix up with an unspecified room for error. It is only a concrete right to freedom, i.e., to the absence of external pressure, including in religious fields, from the civil authorities or from the public authorities.

N.B. But watch out, the intense moral obligation to be Sinn Fein is by no means equivalent to a prohibition of every apostasy. Apostatize remains a fundamental, and imprescriptible human right.

On the theoretical level, druidic paganism is perfectly compatible including morally speaking * with a slow and progressive standing back , with a slow and gradual evolution towards agnosticism even atheism.

On the practical level, the druidic paganism encourages even apostasy because that makes the community able to get rid of its most dubious elements. It does not go in the same way in the religions monolatries and particularly, it seems, in Islamic land (Dar al Islam) , Islam being much less clear on the subject.

The four major Schools of Islamic jurisprudence (madhhab) consider indeed that an apostate must be executed by being based for that on a hadith from Ibn Abbas in which he reports that Muhammad would have said: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” ( Bukhari, volume 9, 57).

And on a hadith also reported by Bukhari handed down by Abdullah. “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Messenger cannot be shed except in three cases: in case of murder , for a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam and leaves the Muslims" (Bukhari, volume 9,17).

Beyond their legitimate differences, particularly in the worship, the pagans of Antiquity always recognized more or less the god-or-demons of the other peoples. The Ancients besides were probably not aware to practice a religion in the sense we understand it today. Founding myths, cosmogonies, divine accounts of all kinds, daily rituals, strengthened only the social links. They didn’t form an exclusive doctrinal, dogmatic and ritual unit. They suggested an identity. Moreover, all the texts with divine nature were not necessarily sacred. It was partly the force, and undoubtedly in a certain way the weakness, of ancient paganisms. They engage readily, out of any clear idea of proselytism, with more or less benevolence and condescension, in the observation of the others, of their myths, of their beliefs and of their practices.

The investigation of Herodotus is one of the first examples which is preserved to us of this design of the things. Our Odinic friends would say Weltanschauung. “Apollo and Artemis were (Egyptians say) children of Dionysus and Isis, and Leto was made their nurse and preserver; in Egyptian, Apollo is Horus, Demeter Isis, Artemis Bubastis. (Herodotus II, 156.)

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This text provides us an example among many others of the “translation” of the name of a foreign divinity into Greek language. This mechanism is commonly called interpretatio in modern studies. It consists in working out an identification between god-or-demons of different origin, on the basis of a most often functional comparison. Herodotus is the first to propose this type of equivalence, but the process will have a long posterity.

The implications of such a mechanism for the comprehension of the religious designs of Ancients are particularly interesting. Indeed, this play of equivalences between divinities implies that Herodotus conceives a permanency of the divine one beyond the ethnic differences. God-or-demons are potentially present and identifiable everywhere. What changes from one people to another, it is the number of the identified god-or-demons as well as the linguistic form of the denomination. What possibly passes from a people to the other, it is the capacity to identify a god-or-demon already potentially present.

The same phenomenon of interpretatio also characterizes the Roman civilization. Tacitus is the first to use the expression “interpretatio romana” when he seeks to identify a couple of German god-or-demons with the Greco-Roman deities Castor and Pollux. But this attitude was therefore already known before, as we have just seen it. When Caesar speaks about the Celtic god-or-demons, he has no difficulty to give them Roman names (Mercury, Mars, Apollo, Jupiter, or others). He recognizes in the Celtic god-or-demons traits which enable him to establish who are their “correspondents” in Rome.

It should, however, be stressed that all these “translations” are to be regarded especially as intellectual working out. They are not imposed by religious authorities and have no consequence on the worship.

Therefore let us always listen with attention to those who choose to share their wisdom with us, and let us respect their right to follow the path necessary or adapted to their own rhythm. Let us respect their right to follow their own vision. TRUE DRUIDISM rejects, indeed, neither the other religions nor the god-or-demons which preside over them; since they are too, a manifestation of the universal including. Their worship can help certain fragile minds needing these crutches to move on while waiting for that they have the force (sunartiu) to aim higher. As for the spiritual athlete, he has to overtake in order to reach the true finishing line that is the experiment of the ultimate Reality, which, finally, and in last analysis, lies in everybody. Even the Gallo-Romans remembered it. “Divinis humana licet componere”: “We may compare things human with divine.” Ausonius (eclogue devoted to the libra).

* Since it believes deeply and absolutely in the existence of several levels of truth in the life of the individual and of the cosmos.

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SEVENTH LETTER OF THE DRUID REMI.

……….With regard to the philosophical atheism itself, of which we find the origin in the Greek philosopher Democritus, it is based on varied arguments, coming under relativism, rationalism, nihilism, and even morality. Atheism refuses to postulate the existence of entities whose presence is neither proven nor observable, and also underlines the possible immorality of this existence if it was proven (the only excuse of God, it is that he does not exist). There are no valid arguments for supporting the belief in the existence of an unspecified God or Devil, whether he is designed by Mankind (therefore anthropomorphic) or he is a metaphysical abstraction 1).

The belief in a supernatural and higher being can even be suspected of containing an implicit depreciation of the human life, an expression of the giving way of the men to their chimerical hope that “somebody” takes care of them nevertheless.

The Greek humanism consists in making Man his own criterion, taking therefore in a way the place of the divine one. The most famous expression of this humanism: “Man is the measure of all things,” which is of Protagoras, means that the human values are worked out by the confrontation of the speeches (democracy) apart from every reference to an unspecified God-or-Demon.

Plato, will answer him in his Laws that “the god-or-evil ought to be the measure of all things.”

Epicurus, Lucretius, Horace, do not deny absolutely the existence of the god-or-demons, but postulate that they are so happy that they ignore men, and it is necessary to do everything to resemble them.

The suspect philosophers suspected of atheism, impiety or heresy, were often persecuted. The Athenians burned the books of Protagoras and offered a reward for who would kill him. Plato in his writings practices a kind of censorship on the materialist Democritus.

In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned for his theory on the plurality of the inhabited worlds, as well as accused of pantheism philosophers. As from the Age of Enlightenment, which takes as a starting point the Greco-Roman antiquity, and until today; several philosophers managed to discourse with freedom on the assumption of the existence of God or of the Demiurge, or the god-or-demons; either to entirely call it into a question, or to reword it. For instance, the Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity raises the question of the theological basis of the morality, a criticism which leads to the negation of the values immutability and to the thesis of the immoralism of the becoming, thesis also defended by Spinoza. The work of Spinoza (particularly the theologico-political treatise and Ethics) proposes a radical materialistic philosophy and forms one of the most remarkable criticisms of the religious phenomenon.

1) But druidism is not the Greek thought, is it necessary to point it out? The radical insufficiency of this disappointing world is, of course, admitted by the totality of the druidic Schools, but they also teach some paths whereby the men who believe in their effectiveness can, either to be again embodied in another parallel world of heavenly nature in order to complete their purification there, or to reach the higher illumination as of here be low by their own efforts, or thanks to an outside assistance.

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FIRST LETTER OF THE PRIMATE.

ACCEPTANCE OF DIFFERENCES AND ACCULTURATION.

We saw fit to evoke here under this title various ways of designing the dialog to have with the Others.

The parable in connection with Hercules, from the high-knower met by Lucian of Samosata circa 158, in the surroundings of Marseilles; and some significant extracts of the sacred texts of the love religion called Christianity, due to the failed rabbi (it is the least we may say) known with the name of Saul (of Tarsus); scattered here and there in the middle of various calls for the money collection intended for Jerusalem. St Paul is indeed much worried by all these financial questions.

“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God. 1:19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing.”* …..God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong and God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should boast before God……..In order your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. …Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready 1). ….

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the pagans, that one has his father’s wife…. You are to deliver such a one to Satan……Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Don’t you know that the saints will judge angels? ….If then, you have to judge things pertaining to this life, do you set them to judge who are of no account in the assembly? ……Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals 2) nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, will inherit the Kingdom of God. Such were some of you….N.B. A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, but only a Christian….For though there are beings that are called “gods,” whether in the heavens or on earth; as there are many “gods” and many “lords”; yet to us there is one God….. My defense to those who examine me is this. 9:4 Have we no right to eat and to drink? 9:5 Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Peter ? Or have only Barnabas and I no right to not work…..The head of the woman is the man………For if a woman is not covered, let her be also shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. …the woman ought to have authority on her head, because of the angels…..Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? As in all the churches of the saints the women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home…..Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I commanded the churches of Galatia, you do likewise. On the first day of the week, let each one of you save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come. When I arrive, I will send whoever you approve with letters to carry your gracious gift to Jerusalem. …..And if any man doesn’t love the Lord , let him be accursed. (First epistle to the Corinthians.)

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Editor’s note . Following the violent protests of our Christian friends on this subject. We recognize readily that St. Paul is a schmuck or an old bastard who has nothing to do with true original Christianity, which is only love, forever. But there are points on which it is not wrong. For example, when he writes that there exists in fact several gods or beings called gods. To be complete we also recognize with our Muslim brothers that jihad has nothing to do with true Islam which is only forgiveness and mercy ( Holy Quran surah 2, verses 190-193).

Considering the wave of letters and remarks from our Moslem friends or from their allies (globalists , anti-racists, etc.) we concede consequently well readily to them …

Firstly: that Jews and Christians changed the Bible and the word of God.

Secondly: that Muhammad cannot be suspected of pedophilia, because Aisha was nubile (nineteen years old) at the time of her marriage with him.

Thirdly: that the concept of reciprocity (“act towards the others as you would like they act towards you”) is well the central pillar of Islam, of what we are delighted.

Fourthly: that war and violence are completely absent from the Quran , or at least are always condemned in it, that on the contrary what is always exalted there, it is non-violence and martyrdom, Muhammad having died crucified.

With regard to the sharia.

Fifthly: that slavery is prohibited in it.

Sixthly: that dhimmis are not second-class citizens but on the contrary privileged people, profiting from an additional protection compared to ordinary Muslim citizens, what is besides almost unjust with respect to the latter.

Seventhly: that the woman has the same rights as the man in Islamic land (dar al islam).

Eighthly: that repudiation is never unilateral, that it can also be granted on the initiative of the wife, and that it is only a (fair and right) divorce.

Ninthly : that as regards sexuality, Islam is not homophobic, but shows on the contrary the largest tolerance towards homophilia. The lesbianism for example is admitted, or at least not punished , in most of the countries with a Muslim majority.

Tenthly: that apostasy is allowed without problems under the terms of the principle “No constraint as regards religion.”

1) Obvious gnostic remarks. The men of spiritual nature are those the Gnostic authors called “pneumatics,” from pneuma “soul.” The men of more fleshly nature are those the Gnostic people called sarkikoi or hylics. It is nevertheless difficult to be categorical, this Christian text being once more a forgery as often in this truth religion. A forgery in the sense that it is undoubtedly the result of an assembly of various fragments of text gathered by the heretic, or Gnostic, or first true Christian, etc. , bishop, Marcion.

Texts perhaps due to the hand of St. Paul , but having never belonged to the same draft. We can notice for example that certain parts of the epistle are easily extricable. Three or four according to the specialists.

2) The word used by this holy man, in Greek, is clearly, how to say that, clearly more picturesque.

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FOURTH LETTER OF THE HIGH-KNOWER JEAN MARTIN.

This Celtic law I follow with my fellows, because I declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods (Arrian. Hunting).

…………..If you consider its shamanistic origins, druidism is the oldest of the religions in the world. The druidic myths insofar as they are the heirs to those of the Western-European prehistoric shamans (see the cave of the Trois-Frères) are the oldest of the religious literatures in the world. But the druidism of today, or more exactly its druidiaction (Irish druideacht) or quadruple path, fír (truth), cert or aicned (justice), techtae (sharing), dliged (duty), is more a religious tendency than a well-organized religion.

N.B.The Gaelic term "dliged" is one of the most ambiguous or ambivalent which is.

The electronic dictionary of the Irish language makes it a synonym of …… one page.

Its main elements are…

Acceptance without servile aping of the ancient druidism in the broader sense i.e., including the thinkers and the intellectuals of the Galatian or Celtiberian peoples… as being the oldest reference on the subject, as well as respectful acceptance of their actions (druidiaction) as a starting point of the reflection necessary to a modern druidism. The neo-druidism is not there to abolish the former druidism but to fulfill it. To fulfill its promises.

Acceptance by each various School of thought of a rhythm of world life going through periods of appearance , life or expansion, and finally destruction; periods, or cycles, having had a beginning and an absolute starting, but following endlessly one another from now.

The acceptance of the belief in the possibility of having again a body in the parallel to ours universe which is called hereafter (after death) whatever its differences with the former body (a new body bellissamos for men, bellissama for women, because of the luan laith called xvarnah by our Zoroastrian friends).

The acceptance of the belief in the hypothetical, possibility, to reappear here on earth in a human form (bacuceos. seibaros if it is a half-reincarnation).

Full acceptance of the fact that the means or the ways to reach the salvation in the other world are multiple.

The acceptance of the fact that, as large as can be the number of the deities, man can be druidicist and not to believe it is necessary to worship all (henotheism or atheistic spiritualism).

For other people, the druidicist is the one who believes in the philosophy that we can deduce from Celtic myths. Their basic teaching is that the true nature of Mankind is divine. God or the Demiurge, the soul, or the Fate, as they are generally named, exist in each living being. Particularly in the human beings as regards the Destiny (called gaefa by our Odinic friends, gaesa in Ireland). Animals indeed are unaware of the concept of destiny, and even are not conscious that they have a destiny. From where the intrinsic interdependence and by definition between Man and Fate. And in a way it is the man who has created the Fate in his image and not the opposite.

The religion is therefore a research of the divine present in each individual. But the high-knowers also declare that nobody needs “to be saved,” because nobody is lost. In the worst of the cases, we live in the ignorance of our true divine nature and we delay our access to the true world.

The high-knowers admit that there are many possible approaches of the Divinity, and that all have more or less value. All lead the Man to the True World, the only reservation being that certain paths can be faster than others.

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The druidism always existed on two different levels - the first one based only on faith and the second one on philosophy. Both levels interlacing themselves narrowly as in the art of embroidery.

On the philosophical level. The idea of a non-separation of Mankind and nature imposes itself in the druidism. There are three great Schools: the pantheistic School, the monist or panentheistic School, the philosophical and considered monotheistic School. The non-orthodox schools - those which refer to the Garden Eden or to Atlantis for example - are the Celtic Christianity or the atheistic materialism, which refutes the existence of the soul. They will not be discussed here except for their panentheist variants.

The philosophy of druidism. The druidism has as characteristic compared to the other religions, the fact that it is closely related to philosophy and (social as physical) science in general. Contrary to the Judeo-Christianity, where the conflicts were numerous between the religious authorities and the scientists, the ancient druidism, as for it, assimilated each one of the discoveries of its time. We often find besides, in Ireland, a true and perpetual mixture of the genres in the reading of a work dealing, however, with a particular field like mythology. The authors disseminate in it information on theology, philosophy, history, toponymy… To read an Irish manuscript is to read a whole encyclopedia.

This philosophy implies a non-dialectical morality, i.e., the absence of the constant and definite confrontation of good and evil, unlike what we find in Judeo-Islamic-Christianity for example, and being connected rather with different moral codes.

In the field of the faith. Contrary to the generally accepted ideas and which form the underculture of our society, true druidism is in reality neither polytheistic in the Greek way , nor monolatrous in the manner of the Jews or of the Muslims.

The various deities or semi-deities admitted by its philosophical system are regarded as different forms of the One, of the higher God or Demiurge, or Tocade; the only ones to be accessible to Mankind (you will be wary nevertheless of not confusing the higher being source of every energy, and the Tokade, eventually architect of our current universe).

Modern druidism is divided into various branches or tendencies, even in sects, of which methods differ. The majority see themselves in what it is agreed to call paganism; some refer to a whole series of anatiomaroi (of great initiates: Hornunnos, Hesus, but also sometimes and less seriously, the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth because this man was not from Nazareth but Nazarene, that is to say a,supposed, member, of the sect by this name)). The integration of Buddhism in our druidism appeared rather tardily, probably in the 18th with the complete forgeries of the Welshman Iolo Morganwg.

Beliefs and practices common to the druidicists.

Although druidism is in fact a whole of worships, each druidicist agrees with a core of shared values. The sum of these values identifies the druidicist .

The cycle of the life: six stages of the life.

For the Irish druidic tradition, man must cross six crucial stages in his life. These six periods these six columns of the life are the following ones.

Noidenotaxeto/Nàidendacht: infancy of the baby.

Mapotaxeto/Macdacht: childhood itself.

Geistlaxeto/Gillacht: adolescence.

Ogiolagiato/Hoclachus: youth (the young adulthood).

Senodageto/Sendacht: mature age.

Diexbliniceto/Diblidecht: old age.

The symbolism of the number 6 refers, of course, for the Christian theologians to the six days of the Creation (the sex aetates mundi), but let us not forget Sunday. In Ireland, that is to be the ultimate echo of an old druidic design.

Mapotaxeto (Macdacht Gaelic): the druidicist young person, educated by the high-knowers, crosses a period of formation as well secular as spiritual. He develops his knowledge and his spirituality during it.

Geistlaxeto (Gaelic Gillacht): the druidicist changes himself into a young adult or an adult not very old, he becomes married and starts a family, what a social as well as a religious duty, is (the perpetuation of the life). But during this period, he also has the right to enjoy this existence (while learning how to control himself).

Ogiolagiato (Gaelic Hoclacus): after having done his social duty, the druidicist leaves the working life and from now on will live another period of the existence. Away the world of business he can then make his entourage benefit from his experience and from his knowledge. Either by helping the others,

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the youngest people, or by “withdrawing in the forest” i.e., by devoting himself to meditation and by avoiding excesses.

Diexbliniceto (Gaelic Diblidecht): the druidicist is gradually detached from this world. Examples Suibhne or Merlin.

The druidism based its faith on an original belief with regard to death.High knowers believe indeed in a life after death, but still with a body.

If the human being normally acted in his life on the earth, he will live like a god-or-demon in a heavenly parallel next world. Once his purification completed in this other world, the soul will be freed definitively from every tie by passing in another heaven.

If the human being really badly acted (1 case out of 100.000???), his anamon will be embodied again on earth in order to prepare there once again its passage in the other world.

AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.

Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.

This work claims to be honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame) of this admirable ancient religion.

Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally. As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit vivifies.

Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).

These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.

The only druidic library worthy of the name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.

The few booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject, and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.

These simplified summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.

This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.

Unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world); our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field, to the absolute minimum.

But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.

This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)

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Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).

A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law. A dogma. An order.

What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL BE DEATH” (Peter Lance).

What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.

Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire overnight in a glade?

What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.

- A god.

- A half god.

- A quarter of God.

- A saint.

- A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.

What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be useful.

The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the ad hoc architect or mason.

A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various statements of the same philosophical and well-considered paganism : spirituality worthy of our day, spirituality for our days.

Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

The misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France, may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being able to reach perfection in this field.

But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.

But illustrations having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad sketch, for example?)

It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation , Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on the ground or in libraries).

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What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly recommended.

We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book), but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth being our only religion.

Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of libraries; or in the field, in the mud of the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of China).

THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY, AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.

HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or the compiler of them. They are, for the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.

Peter DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book. He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.

I immediately confess in order to make the work of my judges easier that men like me were Christian in Rome under Nero, pagan in Jerusalem, sorcerers in Salem, English heretics, Irish Catholics, and today racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, person, while waiting to be tomorrow kufar or again Christian the beastliest antichrist of all the apocalypses, etc. In short as you will have understood it, I am for nothingness death disease suffering ……

By respect for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting (heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my tendencies).

To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…

Now take a sheet of paper, a word processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!

Scapegoats are always needed! A heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century, an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better person (a smart and nice person).

I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want: an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant, homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug, psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see according to the current fashion.

Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).

[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …

As for me I am a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic, incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-Bolshevist or Stalinist-Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a psychopathic murderer as soon as the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in particular].

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Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in druidism.

A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore. Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BROAD OUTLINES.

As regards the bibliography of details see appendix of the last lesson because, as Henry Lizeray says it so well, traditions that must be interpreted. It is there the whole difference which exists between former druidism and neo-druidism.

Lebar Gabala or The Book of Invasions. Paris 1884 (William O'Dwyer)

Base of the druidic Church. The restored druidism. Henry Lizeray, Paris, 1885.

National traditions rediscovered. Paris 1892.

Aesus or the secret doctrines of the druids. Paris 1902.

Ogmius or Orpheus. Paris 1903.

CONTENTS.

The parable of the druid and of the philosopher Page 004

Fifth letter of the druid Aremi (origin of the religions) Page 006

Third letter of the old druid of the Arden Forest (archeology of religions) Page 015

Fifth letter of the old high-knower of the Arden Forest (notice about primitive totemism) Page 022

Third letter of the druid Remi Page 028

Fourth letter of the high-knower Aremi (about the blue Danube) Page 030

Fifth letter of the druid Jean Martin (various supports of meditation in the ancient druidism) Page 033

Eleventh letter of the old high-knower of the Menapian Forest (arcana or simulacra) Page 036

Ninth letter of the old high-knower of the Arden Forest (the pantheist communion) Page 037

Seventh letter of the high-knower Jean Martin (towards the end of every suffering) Page 38

Fourth letter of the old high-knower of the Menapian Forest (general information on druidism) Page 039

Third letter of the high-knower Aremi (general information on druidism) Page 041

Second letter of the druid Aremi (about the respect due to the great ancestors) Page 043

Fourth letter of the Primate (metahistory) Page 045

Second letter of the Primate (the “sayings” of the primordial druid Marovesus in Thule/Falias) Page 047

First letter of the druid Remi druid (in connection with the great hesus) Page 049

Seventh letter of the old high-knower old of the Arden Forest (doctrines of the avatars in druidism) Page 053

Third letter of the high-knower Jean Martin (parapsychology) Page 055

Seventh letter of the Primate (focus on the preternatural today). Page 058

Twelfth letter of the old druid of the Arden Forest (notice on the individual erdathe) Page 064

Fourth letter of the druid Remi (the blossoming through knowledge). Page 067

First letter of the high-knower Aremi (notice on the path of the high knower of amarcolitanos type) Page 073

First letter of the high-knower Jean Martin (meditation in the way of Hornunnos) Page 077

Eighth letter of the old high-knower of the Arden Forest (sacrifices prayers and meditations) Page 080

Sixth letter of the druid Jean Martin (note on the use of the word “castle”) Page 082

Seventh letter of the druid Aremi (other names of the Touta). Page 083

Ninth letter of the druid Remi (about the gender of angels) Page 085

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Second letter of the druid Remi (reading of the Bible) Page 089

Eighth letter of the ¨Primate (Pelagian analysis of the Jewish myths) Page 091

Third letter of the Primate (small differences between druidic schools: pantheism panentheism) Page 092

Fifth letter of the Primate (agnosticism) Page 096

Sixth letter of the old druid of the Menapian Forest (atheism and free thinking) Page 098

Sixth letter of the Primate (agnosticism) Page 100

Sixth letter of the high-knower Aremi (broad outlines of druidic philosophy) Page 101

Second letter of the high-knower Jean Martin (non-dogmatism of druidism) Page 103

Tenth letter of the old high-knower of the Arden Forest (meditation about the relativity of things) Page 105

Eighth letter of the druid Remi (inter faith approach). Page 107

Seventh letter of the druid Remi (the Greco-Roman thought) Page 110

First letter of the Primate (acceptance of differences and acculturation) Page 111

Fourth letter of the high-knower Jean Martin (neo-druidism). Page 113

Afterword in the way of John Toland. Page 115

Bibliography of the broad outlines. Page 118

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.

2. Various preliminary general information about Celts.

3. History of the pact with gods volume 1.

4. Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2.

5. History of the peace with gods volume 3.

6. History of the peace with gods volume 4.

7. History of the peace with gods volume 5.

8. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1.

9. Irish apocryphal texts.

10. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.

11. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.

12. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).

13. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology).

14. The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).

15. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.

16. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.

17. The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.

18. The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2

19. Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.

20. Celtic poems.

21. The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.

22. The Roland’s complex .

23. At the base of the lantern of the dead.

24. The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.

25. The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).

26. Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.

27. Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.

28. From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.

29. Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.

30. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.

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31. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.

32. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.

33. Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

34. Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

35. Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

36. Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

37. Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.

Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13rd, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is thus born the same year as the Howard Hawks film entitled “the Big Sky”. Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half Irish half French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12th, 1988, in Paris-Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence 3 children. John Wolf born May 11th, 1989. Alex born April 10th, 1990. Millicent born August 31st, 1993. Deceased on September 28th, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).

Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or demigod (and of course not a messiah).

But he has become in a few years one of the most lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.

He was also some time assistant-treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of which he could get archives and texts or publications.

But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions (on the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him moreover some vexations on behalf of the French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last years of his life, to silence him.

Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return to the home country of his distant ancestors.

It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer the France of Louis XIV or of Lafayette or even of Napoleon (which has really been a great nation in those days).

Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of which he became one of the best specialists,

even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a little both languages (English but also French).

Those were therefore the notes found on the hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers.

Our father has of course left us a considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any rate, above what we have been able to understand of them.