A few days ago I saw a picture on one of my favourite news web sites. In it there were some men performing what seemed to be some kind of ritual. From their long white robes, turban like headdresses and grey beards, I judged that they were probably some Middle Eastern cult, but on a second glance though, I noticed they were standing in front of England's most famous bronze age monument and that the text below described them as "druids celebrating the autumn equinox".

Suddenly their measure of holiness dropped. They weren't the priests of some century old tradition acting out a ritual that had been performed for ages and ages, nor were they scholars of suras, sutras, vedas or mantras, no... They were a bunch of role-players taking their game far to serious.

Of course they are not the only new-age group that performs their little theatre to provide their followers with a religious experience they apparently could not find in the temples, mandirs, mosques, synagogues and churches of the old religions, and normally I'd say that they should do whatever makes them happy.

But with neo-pagans I have an ambivalent relationship, because they are not only fishing in my pond, but some of them are polluting it.

I have always been interested in antiquity and the dark ages. As a kid I read about Greek and Norse myths and as a student I began to read the original sources in translation. Eventually, as I had enough time on my hands, I subscribed at the Celtic department to study the languages (Old- and Middle-Irish, Middle-Welsh, Middle-Breton) and culture of that one ancient western European culture I knew far too little about.

Soon the common misconceptions about the Celts were stamped out of us ignorant students. They were neither the brutal savages that the Victorians described, nor the woman-friendly tree-huggers that people nowadays make of them. Of course there was a bit of truth in both views: The Victorians were most likely correct in that some Celts were naked, bloodthirsty head-hunters that burned of hung their captives as a sacrifice to their gods, while the modern fantasy writers may be correct that amongst the Celts women had more rights than amongst the 'civilized' Mediterranean peoples and that they had their holy places around trees. But both views are so exaggerated that they reflect more about the ages in which they emerged than about the Celts of antiquity.

The Victorians had good reasons to present the Celts as barbarians: It fitted with their policies in Ireland. In their view, they were bringing civilization to a savage people that drank the bathwater of their kings, slept with the skulls of their slain enemies and made poems about arses and poo. That those things happened centuries before the Battle of the Boyne was not that relevant. They simply contrasted the wild, uncivilized Celt to the civilized Englishman.

Similarly today's popular view reflects today's society: The Celts are now presented as noble, environmentally friendly folks that wrote poetry, made great music and treated their women with great respect. In other words, they are now shown as the ideal and politically correct society that the West would like to be.

The truth is that all we know of the ancient Celts is what comes from Greek, Roman and medieval sources. It's thus all second or third hand information. Artefacts may support many theories, but archaeologists are reluctant to refer to their finds as 'Celtic' Instead prefer much safer labels, such as Iron Age or La Tene.

Now back to our 'druids': Why did I so unkindly call them 'a bunch of role-players'?

The reason for that is that they are... Their rituals are completely made up and have no connection to the druids of old. The simple reason for this is that the real druids died out centuries ago, without leaving any teachings behind.

According to the Greek writer Strabo, there were three groups of learned men amongst the Celts: The vates, the bards and the druids. Today's pagans seem to blend all three together and ignore the very important distinctions that must have existed between different classes and functions in ancient Celtic society.

If we look at medieval Ireland, the region where druidism survived longest, the distinctions were very strict. By the time the Irish began to write other things than very short ogham inscriptions, Saint Patrick (or more likely Palladius) had already converted them to Christianity and bishops had replaced druids. The structure of society was still unique though. Instead of the feudal lordships of Continental Europe, the Irish had a most complex system, where the free people were subdivided into three categories, each again divided in seven classes (sometimes six, eight or nine). Each class had different rights and obligations. Climbing the social ladder was possible, but it was far from easy.

The three main categories were the priests, the laymen and the filid. Of these, the filid may well have taken over many functions of the druids and it has been suggested that the eventual downfall of their class may have been the result of a power struggle between them and the church. It would take another essay to address that issue though.

The point is that someone who could not keep up the status of a certain class for three generations would lose his status. Now I seriously doubt if any of these modern 'druids' has a father and grandfather that was a druid.

Moreover each ofthe classes had to learn specific things associated with their class. An ollam for instance, which was the highest rank of filid, had to know three hundred poems by heart and had to be able to compose a flawless poem according to certain difficult rhyme schemes on the spot. Failure to do so would certainly affect his status.

It's most likely that druids once had to meet similar requirements, and according to Roman sources the training of a druid took up twenty to thirty years. It was not something someone did in a weekend. It was a way of life. People were born to be druids...

It's therefore probably safe to conclude that none of these self proclaimed 'druids' is likely to have had the status of druid in antiquity...