Hearth Culture

A Brief History of the Druids

By: Peter Berresford Ellis

Peter Berresford has taken a very mysterious and in the past our of reach topic, the Druids and has done an excellent job explaining who they were, what they were and where they went. The topic of Druids has been highly debated in modern pagan circles over centuries for a variety of reasons. The majority of that being that the sources used to learn about them are often found to be incredibly biased and often reflect a lot of negative imagery of the Druids. The difficulty comes when people feel the need to recreate instead of interpreting their beliefs. The book makes it fairly clear early on that there is no real way to understand what the druids did or believe in any factual way. The best we can do is take the little info we have and make comparisons to other sources of info such as language and other cultures who existed around the time.

The author finds a way to take these very debated topics and then bring them back into reality by comparing these stories and connections to things through history we have more solid information on. Connecting the Druids to Celtic languages and its spread across Europe explains the far reach of Celtic society and it solidifies the information we have presented before us. The author takes the time and care to take what would be incredibly anxious readings and modern criticisms into consideration when he presents his side of the story. While this was the aspect of the book that made it the most believable when it comes to Druidry it at the same time was the reason the book was so incredibly difficult to read. Every story had a side story that was used to connect it and make it more of a fact than the hearsay. This was a blessing and a curse at the same time. It showed that the topics I was reading where true and lifted the veil of mystery a little but at the same time it made the book itself a slog of a read. The book though did provide an excellent resource of outside sources to confirm our thoughts and beliefs on Druidry.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has a deeper desire to learn about Druidry with the caveat that the book is a difficult read. If you are capable of getting past that then it is well worth the exhaustion.