DRUIDS OF ELD

A Site for exploration and restoration of Ancient Myth and Legend

Launched in the Lunation of Lughnasadh, 7 August 2024

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of Eld, with voices sad and prophetic . . .

'Evangeline' -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882

Exploring the forgotten Lore of Ancient Times and of our ancient Ancestors, and through the mists and shadows of successive Ages, beyond the reach of latter-day censors and corruptors, requires the deepest Druidry our minds can muster.

Especially true is this for the long-suppressed wisdom and traditions of the Norse and Celtic cultures of primeval Europe, which suffered such oppression and neglect for well over a thousand years. Our surviving texts, records, and inscriptions are fragmentary --the remnants of a vast body of poetry, narrative, lore, and tradition- and at best only partially authentic: that is, what has survived has be subject to errors in recording and transcribing, omission or destruction of original material, addition or insertion of fabricated material, misremembered or deliberately altered texts, secular changes in word meanings and general corruption of grammar, syntax and context of language that inevitably occurs over periods of neglect. However, more old material is likely to be discovered in coming years: texts found in ancient ruins, libraries, and dwellings; inscriptions and art works unearthed from dig sites, and unexpected encounters of ancient works disguised in later renditions of stories, poems, songs, works of art and other artifacts. From continued exploration and dedicated compilation of such material, clues to our ancient past may gradually be assembled into an ever more compete tapestry of our early literate and pre-literate ages. From this research may we obtain, at long last, a full restoration of our true identity in its original setting, with the rituals, traditions and experiential mysteries that accompanied those conditions. We will be whole again, and healed of the many afflictions of law, culture, and alien belief systems imposed on our forebears by invasive foreign powers. Thus, many present day common 'traditions' in the Western world are not really our traditions at all; rather, they are the impositions of hostile invasion, aggression, and deceit, established by forces not congenial to our ancestors and their way of life. Continued foreign occupation resulted in many foreign traditions becoming institutions in our culture, which most of us today, having been raised under them, blindly accept them as 'normal'. Nowhere more stridently instituted is this occurrence than in the establishment of Judeo-Christian Religion: How is it that the native population of Northern Europe, in particular, came to bow and worship before a Middle-Eastern god? And to celebrate this foreign religion with so many elements of Middle Eastern culture and language? Was it through the great ideological appeal and gentle persuasion of its adherents? Hardly! Rather, this "perverse and extravagant superstition" (in the words of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan) was subsequently foisted upon the indigenous peoples of Europe through a campaign of utmost brutality and zealous malice, conducted on a scale with such thoroughness and vindictiveness as the world had never seen until, possibly, the fanatical spread of Islam (another Middle-Eastern monotheistic religion), over most of southern Asia and northern Africa, through similar campaigns of utmost brutality.

The consequence of this foreign invasive campaign have left a European culture semi-functional, only partially alive, essentially occupied by, and obsequious to, a self-interested structure of Alien Authority! Thus ideologically and psychologically hobbled, the European peoples cannot function as wholly viable members of their Nations, and cannot attain to the creative potential with which Nature has endowed them. Yet despite this debility, elements of the real culture sporadically sprout through the toxic overlay of foreign religion, One example may be discerned in the person of celebrated poet and man of letters Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (depicted above), whose attention to ancient 'heathen' ways, language and culture in his works betrays an underlying survival of elder times and attitudes in the consciousness of later western civilization. This, despite the contamination of Judeo-Christian dogma which, in Longfellow's case, seems yet to have commanded in his works an obligatory acknowledgement of an alien theological supremacy. Examples of this obsequious bow to foreign theological occupation may be found inserted sporadically in his most authentically 'pagan' Norse poetry, stylistically otherwise steeped in the flavor of those extant precious fragments of the original traditions. A complete collection of the Norse Ballads of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may be found at the site:

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/longfellow.html

These works of Longfellow demonstrate great erudition in the antique style and diction of the old Norse tradition, and their considerable quantity is evidence of more than passing interest in these olden arts --in fact, they seem to express an uncanny obsession with them. And certainly Longfellow's appearance, easily likened to that of a 'Druid of Eld' himself, reinforces this talent, knowledge, and identity. The 'Wraith of Odin' , in particular, is noticeably drenched in the brooding style of the archaic Skalds and Sagas; 'Tegner's Drapa' is a haunting threnody on the Death of Baldur, which, however, awkwardly substitutes a Christian surrogate for the prophesied Future Age of Baldur intimated by the old Norse Eddas, thereby utterly evading the drama of the coming pagan Gotterdammerung. --A sad comment on the stifling cultural influence of the Church well into the nineteenth century literary arena.

Not quite so in the case of one Richard Wagner, however, in whose later works those theological inclinations are transmuted into pagan passions and values: the Grail legend being iconically pagan in origin, whose 'Christian' veneer is faded by Wagner into a thoroughly heathen mystery play --the 'Gra-al' being traceable to an ancient skull-bowl ritual drinking vessel. Wagner had long since openly crossed a line which left Christianity behind; Longfellow seems to have yearned to do so, but could not --at least not openly.