
It is true that druids presided at religious functions and promulgated the Celtic religion and its rites. “ have been mistakenly called ‘a religious caste’. As historian Peter Berresford Ellis argued in his A Dictionary of Irish Mythology: One misconception we can immediately dispel is that the druids were solely concerned with the religious affairs of the Celtic peoples they served, that their principal function was that of pagan high priest. The last 500 years has seen our vision of them change equally as rapidly.” source: Druids: A Very Short Introduction

400 BC to AD 400, the Druid caste changed dramatically, as did the society of which they were a part. “Each generation interprets the Druids according to their own perspectives and prejudices, and therein lies one of the fascinations of the subject… Over the 800 years or so from c. As British archaeologist and academic Barry Cunliffe pointed out in his Very Short Introduction to the subject, “druid” meant different things at different times: It’s a trickier question than one might think. But how do the druids of our imaginations measure up against the genuine item? That is the popular image of the druid, that ancient caste of Celtic spell-caster.


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