OBOD: The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids
Founded in 1964, OBOD was an offshoot of the old tree of the Ancient Druid Order. The ADO traces its origins back to the semi-legendary Mt. Haemus Grove in the seventeenth century. OBOD and the several other traditional British druid orders grew out of the Druid Revival of the early modern period. This Revival was related to the Romantic Movement in art, literature, and music -- a movement that was in part a reaction against the increasing destruction of the natural environment and traditional cultures. Industrialism, materialism, and rationalism were rejected as privileged discourses. Truth, the earliest founders thought, was not to be found in embracing Neoclassicism, but in seeking out the indegenous mythic past of the ancient pagan cultures of pre-Roman times.
This Romantic reaction was against the uncritical adoption of an imperial culture of the Romans with its emphasis on the power of a patrician ruling class, upon war and conquest, and upon standardization and rationalization. Modern Druidry hearkens back to those pre-Roman wise men, the Druids, described by Julius Caesar and other Roman and Greek historians. Little reliable information has survived of ancient Celtic culture, much less of the pre-Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland. But enough has survived to offer us a tantalizing glimpse at a complex and admirable culture.
The Druid Revival took the attitude that the Druids and Bards of old were not "barbarians" but rather philosophers and spiritual leaders of a culture that deserves our respect at least as much as the dominant imperial culture of Rome. After centuries of education focussed on Latin and the Classics, the people of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland began to consider the possiblity of reviving the Gaelic and Brythonic languages of their ancestors.
In Ireland, then estranged from England (as it still is today) because of politics and empire, poets such as W. B. Yeats led an Irish Renaissance. In England, the movement was less political and more rooted in the fraternalism of Freemasonry. Modern Druids were seeking their heritage and a spirituality of the Land itself. They turned for inspiration to the wonders of the old megalithic monuments, such as Stonehenge, and to the poetry of visionary British poets such as William Blake. They turned also to the Arthurian Romances as the remnants of ancient Welsh wisdom and myth.
It is out of this background that the OBOD emerges. In the mid-twentieth century, counter-cultural movements of all kinds were again questioning the status quo and the mentality of destruction, conquest, and subjugation that the heirs of Roman imperialism still embrace today. Druidry by contrast, seeks to draw upon the artistic and imaginative side of human nature, and since the 1960s has been highly influenced by the environmentalist movement. Ecology, and an awareness of the long-term consequences of destructive industry has become a major part of Druidry today.
OBOD practices center upon contemplation and the search for individual truth. This should be distinguished from seeking some sort of universal truth, the answers that a faith-community typically holds in common. Modern Druidry cannot really be considered a "faith community" as it centrally embraces the individual search for truth through self-examination and questioning. It is thus perhaps better described as a philosophy of life, entirely non-dogmatic.
Druidic philosophy cannot be reduced to a set of doctrines or even a set of rituals. There is no standardization within OBOD and no stipulation that members of the order adhere to particular beliefs or practices. We share the practices taught in the Bardic, Ovate, and Druid grade courses of study, but no one is encouraged to embrace them as a religion in the usual sense of the word. Instead of seeking conformity within a group, Druidry seeks non-conformity and individual vision.
Chosen Chiefs
The Order has practically no organization. In typically anti-establishment and non-conformist style, bureaucracy and rules are avoided and the business of the Order conducted by a network of volunteers. The Chosen Chief is the head of the Order and presently resides in Sussex where a small office is maintained. Members are sometimes surprised to find how little there is in the way of procedures. Although structured like a masonic or magical order in some ways, OBOD does not stand on ceremony much. There are no secret handshakes and the initiation rituals are very low-key, dispensing with most of the pomp and theatricality of the Victorians, but still maintaining a level of dignity and connection to the past.
The first chief and founder of OBOD was Ross Nichols, druidically known as Nuinn (the Irish word for Ash Tree). Nichols was a school teacher, poet, naturist, and devout member of the Church of England. His vision in fouding a new order was in part to emphasize the three grades of old Druidry -- that is the roles of Bard, Ovate, and Druid. As the Order evolved and developed, these roles became defined in modern terms. Nuinn's writings have been collected and published posthumously by the current Chief of the Order, Philip Carr-Gomm. See particularly, The Book of Druidry. The Order records a long list of Chiefs back through the Ancient Druid Order and into the relatively poorly documented mists of the 18th Century. William Blake and Stukeley are numbered among the Chiefs, but it is not really known if this is historically true or whether these early Revivialists are rather spiritual heads of Druidry, men who inspired others to consider the possibility of reviving a long defunct native spiritual tradition.
Philip Carr-Gomm is the creative force that built OBOD into the international teaching order that it is today. Through the eighties and nineties, the development of the teaching courses and their dissemination throughout the world to many seekers was a major part of the current Druid Renaissance. OBOD's Druidry has philosophical similarities to the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA). Both groups grew out of a period in which individual soul-searching and conscience was valued above conformity, dogma, and "organized religion." Philip's many books have set out his own approach to Druid philosophy and there is no better way to get a sense of what the Order is all about than to read them. Among the titles are Druid Mysteries, The Druid Way, and Druidcraft. In these books, one finds a way of living life filled with wonder, love of the Land and the Ancestors, and a sincere desire to change human civilization from its present self-destructive course.
Alferian and Philip on Glastonbury Tor - June 2006
Druidry and Wicca
Ross Nichols was a friend of Gerald Gardner and some writers have even suggested that Nichols helped his friend edit and prepare his books on Wicca, the revival of medieval witchcraft as a nature religion. The roots of OBOD and Wicca come from the same era and many of the same people, so that one can trace similar interests and even symbolism in some cases. Both Gardner and Nichols were members of the Ancient Druid Order. They participated in a naturist community seeking attunement with nature through being outdoors without the mediation of clothes. However, unlike Gardnerian Wicca, OBOD does not incorporate ritual nudity into its practices. Members typically wear robes, and often the traditional white robes mentioned by the Roman historian Pliny in his description of the Iron Age druids.
Other aspects shared by the two traditions are the sacred geometry of the circle squared, invocations of the four directions in ritual work, and the use of a wand and cauldron -- though the latter tools are used quite differently in the two traditions. As modern Wicca has grown more eclectic and witches have sought out Celtic traditions, Wicca has grown more like Druidry in some circles. Wicca, as it started out in the 1950s, was not rooted in Celtic culture. Indeed the word "wicca" itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon. However, half a century of research into these traditions has shown how much Germanic and Celtic paganisms had in common, despite their history of warfare. Within Druidry today, the two heritages mingle freely, many druids working with the Norse or Anglo-Saxon runes as well as the Celtic oghams, for example, and equating the Norse World Tree with the Bilios, or central pillar-tree of Celtic folklore.
Summer Solstice ritual on Glastonbury Tor - the Five Readers.
Apart from this eclecticism, however, traditional British Druidry is quite different from Wicca. While druids hearken back to the pre-Roman Celts and emulate some of their known practices and beliefs, Druidry never embraced Margaret Murray's thesis of a primitive matriarchy and a pan-European "Old Religion" that centered upon the worship of a God and Goddess pair. Druids, by contrast spent a good deal of time in the 19th Century speculating that the religion of the ancient Celts might have been a primordial religion predating not only Christianity but also Judaism. Some scholars, such as Lewis Spence, have considered the possibility that the proto-Celtic cultures of the British Isles and Ireland come from the same prehistoric roots as the culture of ancient Egypt, each carrying a cult of the dead and its attendant mysteries and doctrine of immortality from an unknown source. This unknown source culture has sometimes been linked to the myth of Atlantis, though, of course, academic students of prehistoric Europe find such specultions too fanciful.
Modern Druidry is a mixture of fascination with history and archaeology as it sheds light on the past with an equal love of imagination, myth, and storytelling. It is often said that one of the chief values of Druidry is truth. However, the word "truth" should not be mistakenly equated with simple historical truth (if indeed there is such a thing). Rather druidic truth is an inner verity that comes with understanding the world and oneself. It is not objective truth so much as a recognition that truth is always individual, always subjective, and always shifting as our perspective and knowledge changes. If you run across a druid who gets up on a stump and proclaims that he know the truth and is prepared to reveal it to you, then you have found someone who does not understand the spirit of modern Druidry (or he might be the Lorax).
Arriving at the tower gate on Glastonbury Tor - Summer Solstice 2006
Bards, Ovates, and Druids
The three grades of OBOD should not be considered to be "ranks" in a hierarchy. No power or authority of any kind adheres to these titles. They simply are the old divisions of Druids that are described by the Classical writers. We use the names to indicate three levels of study, each building upon the one before like turnings in a spiral rising upwards to greater understanding and consciousness. The gwersi (lessons) do not contain ancient hidden secrets or occult knowledge that will give you the power to levitate or raise up druidic fogs to thwart your enemies. If you are searching for sensationalism and secret masters, you will be quite disappointed. If you are searching for yourself, however, and your own sources of inner creativity, then you will find in the OBOD course an excellent tool to help you in your quest. Druids do not consider themselves superior to Ovates and Bards, but they do usually take the leadership positions in the Order and one of the few rules is that a seed-group cannot be recognized as a fully-fleged Grove until it has two members of Druid grade.
The Chief Druids of a grove are not, however, teachers in the usual sense. When taking the courses of study, one is assigned a tutor but this is always someone far away. There is a good reason for this system as it is intended to prevent the guru-complex that plagues so many esoteric orders. The OBOD tutor is a mentor, gently guiding and evaluating your progress. It is not the tutor's role to fill you full of facts and information, but rather to act as a guide as you seek your own understanding of the traditional lore and engage with it in your own way. In the parlance of modern education, this is "student-centered' learning. It is all about you as a student seeker, and not about the teacher. If you belong to a grove like Geal-Darach Grove, then your grove chief and fellow members can act as additional support for you in your quest, but they cannot teach the material in the gwersi because it is based in your own expeience. That approach is hard for some new members to grasp, expecting instead that some all-wise elder will divulge ancient secrets and bestow supernatural powers through mystic rites of initiation.
The Bardic grade course is the first circle of study. It focuses on the myth of Taliesin, the legendary Welsh bard and shapeshifter. It includes many triads from the medieval Welsh manuscripts that are believed to preserve some of the anicient Druidic wisdom. You will, in your passage through this turning, study the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in their relationship to the four directions of the compass, the four seasons of the year, the eight festivals of the Druidic year, and the seasons of the human life cycle. The rituals and meditations can be done alone or with others, as you wish, but are intended mainly as individual contemplative activities. In the newly released audio version of the course, these can even be used as guided meditations, listening to the CDs as they bring you into a state of trance. The objective of the Bardic course is not to make you a poet or a singer of legends. It is to help you discover your own inner springs of inspiration and expression through a relationship to Nature that is both physical and imaginal.
After the dawn ritual at Stonehenge - June 2006
The Ovate study program continues on building upon what was learned in the Bardic grade. Many OBOD members choose not to go on to the Ovate grade, and there is no shame in that. While the Bardic grade helps one to locate oneself in the horizontal plane, relative to space and the cycles of time, the Ovate calling is to engage with the vertical dimension and the three worlds as they are delineated in lore. These are the realms of Annwn (pronounced ah-NOON) from which all material things are made manifest, the middle realm of forms, called Abred, and the upper realm of celestial power called Gwinfed, "the White Life." These three realms are sometimes linked symbolically to Sea, Earth, and Sky respecively. They are surrounded and interpenetrated by a fourth realm of pure Divinity called Ceugant (KY-gant). The OBOD Ovate explores the trees, the oghams, divination, communion with the Ancestors, and communication with nature sprits and the denizens of Faerie. It is an intense and demanding course of study that requries one to face many inner demons and adjust one's sense of reality much further way from the mundane than does the Bardic grade. The way of the Ovate is in some respects similar to the way of the witch or the tribal shaman. It is a Feminine realm that embraces the arts of healing as well as prophecy and divination. The Latin word vates, from which Ovate is derived, means "seer." It thus has much to do with developing the Sight, the ability to walk between the worlds.
If the Ovate grade course is characterized by the Divine Feminine and the opening of oneself to the powers of the Earth and Sea, then the Druid grade might be characterized as Masculine in its cultivation of will and intention. The Druid's tools are wand and staff, emblems of self-assertion and command. The Druid grade work focuses on leadership and service, on the Arthurian legends and their esoteric meaning, on the mythic roles of king, warrior, and wizard, on stone lore and work with stone circles, and on the meaning of druid magic, ethics, truth, and the Divine. The Druid grade, likewise, is not for everyone. It demands a particular level of dedication to the order and to service to other druids (with a small "d") -- that is, all followers of the Druid Way.
Those who complete all three study programs become Druid Companions of the Order, a title which mainly signifies the completion of the time of formal study. Most Druid grade members admit readily that completion of the Druid grade opens one to a lifetime of continued study, reading, meditation, and contemplation. It is also true, however, that study and reading about the ancient Celts is not in fact what Druidry is all about. Communion and communication with Nature is the center of the Druid Way, and so OBOD members are more likely to be found in wood or mountain or garden than poring over medieval literature, or gathered together performing group rituals. To feel a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood with an oak tree or a brook -- this expresses the essence of Druidry better than anything else.
Learn More!
Visit the OBOD web site at www.druidry.org for much more information about the order and its programs.
©2006 The Bardic Institute
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