I suppose I should introduce myself and explain what this site is about. I am so far as I know, the last living druid of the Irish tradition. Though the Irish druidic tradition, and all the others are widely believed to have disappeared over a millenium ago, a small handfull of druids survived secretly. The stories told to Irish children in schools about the Christianisation of Ireland and the Vikings paint the winner's history, with all the inconvenient rough edges and cruel truths rubbed off by centuries of retelling.
The Vikings were the allies of Irish tribes and people who preferred their own druidic tradition to the incoming Christian religion. The truth is written in Irish place names and family names. Donegal - the fort of the foreigner (Galloway in Scotland is similarly named). Laughlin and Higgins - the descendent of dane or norseman. Doyle - the dark foreigner. McAuliff - the ‘Son of Olaf’, Olaf, who was the first Viking king of Dublin arriving in 841.
There is further evidence for this in things like the locations of round towers. These were built in Christian lands, not for defense from the Vikings, but as symbols of Christian power. They were built in the era of the Viking raids/wars. But the truth is that the Vikings were merely supporting the pagan Irish agaist the incoming Christian religion.
Eventually Christianity prevailed, but the snakes were never truly driven out of Ireland. The landscape is dotted with pagan Holy wells. Placenames spill out pagan mythology. Christianity itself as it has been and is practised in Ireland has a distinctly pagan flavour. But all these things survived by stealth. And so too did a tiny handful of druids, preserving and passing on what they could from generation to generation.
Finally, I get to the point! This is why I am creating this website. I was fortunate enough in my youth to stumble into the shop of, and strike up a conversation with a man who turned out to be a druid. We had a friendly if somewhat odd chat. At that time I felt I had screwed my life up completely and that I was getting pushed and pulled from all sides. Yet here was a man ploughing his own furrow, and from the moment I walked into his shop he seemed fully aware of my predicament, no judgement, no advice, just understanding and a pleasant chat. It was similar to the intense feeling of chemistry, or frisson when you meet someone who is about to be your lover, but entirely different!
That was how I met the druid who introduced me to what is left of the pre christian religion of Ireland. A philosophy perhaps more than a religion, with a pantheon of Gods similar to Hinduism, or the Norse or Roman or Greek pantheons, with more than a hint of the Buddhist way of looking at things. The twists and turns of my life have not so far presented me with an apprentice, but perhaps this site will.
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