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A druid was a member of the high-ranking priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts.
The Dun Ailline Druid Brotherhood (Hermandad Druida Dun Ailline in Spanish) is a pagan organization for followers of the Celtic Neopaganism based on Spain in 2010 which supports the practice of a type of Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism called Druidism, centered on the Celtic culture of Ireland, and whose principal deities are known as the ...
The ritual of oak and mistletoe is a Celtic religious ceremony, in which white-clad druids climbed a sacred oak, cut down the mistletoe growing on it, sacrificed two white bulls and used the mistletoe to make an elixir to cure infertility and the effects of poison. [1]
In some neo-druid traditions the festival is called Alban Hefin. The sun in its greatest strength is greeted and celebrated on this holiday. While it is the time of greatest strength of the solar current, it also marks a turning point, for the sun also begins its time of decline as the wheel of the year turns.
Diagram comparing the Celtic, astronomical and meteorological calendars. Among the Insular Celts, the year was divided into a light half and a dark half.As the day was seen as beginning at sunset, so the year was seen as beginning with the arrival of the darkness, at Calan Gaeaf / Samhain (around 1 November in the modern calendar). [4]
Samhain (/ ˈ s ɑː w ɪ n / SAH-win, / ˈ s aʊ ɪ n / SOW-in, Irish: [ˈsˠəunʲ], Scottish Gaelic: [ˈs̪ãũ.ɪɲ]) or Sauin (Manx: [ˈsoːɪnʲ]) is a Gaelic festival on 1 November marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. [1]
With his golden sickle, and in one chop, the Chief Druid would remove the mistletoe to be caught below. [ 1 ] This ritual was recorded by Pliny (24-79 CE) in his Natural History (16.24), not as a part of a seasonal festival, but in the context of a sacrifice of two white bulls to invoke prosperity from the gods.
Celtic Reconstructionists usually celebrate Beltane when the local hawthorn trees are in bloom. Many observe the traditional bonfire rites, to whatever extent this is feasible where they live. This may involve passing themselves and their pets or livestock between two bonfires, and bringing home a candle lit from the bonfire.