Druids and hard decisions

In 1989 I attended an advanced permaculture design course led by Bill Mollison (co-founder, with David Holmgren, of permaculture design) at Ragman's Lane Farm in Gloucestershire. It was an opportune moment and an inspiring course.

Among other things, Bill spoke about a tribal role that has no parallel in modern times that he tentatively referred to as the crop master/mistress. It fell to this person to oversee and manage tribal and environmental resources by observing and interpreting correspondences in the whole system (environment and tribe). This role was fundamental to the continued existence and well being of the tribe and the environment and involved decisions that we might see as hard in the extreme.

As an example he mentioned the Koori, the Australian aborigines, where the crop master/mistress might relate specific observations (the flowering of a particular plant, the song of a certain bird, the patterns of cloud) to longer term occurrences, such as the possibility of an extended drought. By relating the observations to the information contained in the oral tradition, various steps might need to be taken.

The crop master/mistress may then decide to remove, say, red kangaroo from the tribal menu; it was no longer to be hunted until further observations and correspondences were made that allowed hunting of the red kangaroo to begin again, even if this meant starvation for some members of the tribe. The crux being that if the red kangaroo was hunted now, population levels would fall below a certain point, or other effects would accrue through the hunting that would mean that the whole tribe would be threatened by starvation. That is, crop master/mistress would lay down rules for the benefit of the whole tribe and the environment, even if this meant that individuals might suffer unto death.

Thinking about this role has both inspired and terrified me over the years.

I have a great interest in the ancient world and being a resident of Cymru (Wales) a particular interest in the Celts and in turn, the druidic traditions. From my studies of pre-history and archaeology, it seems likely that the people who came to be known as the Celts in Europe formed from a blending of two cultures. One, a war like horse culture moved west across Europe from about 1000BC onwards, bringing masculine sky gods with them. However, in western Europe it seems they did not just conquer the mother goddess peoples who were already there but instead assimilated, or were assimilated themselves, by the existing culture. Hence the Celtic mythologies contain both the masculine sky gods and the mother goddesses and the society was notable (and unusual) for its treatment of women who could be "kings", divorce their husbands, own property, train as warriors and the like (as an aside, it was only with the growth of the Celtic church that the status of women was gradually eroded).

Like the Koori, the Celts relied on an aural tradition to pass knowledge down through time and, also like the Koori, that aural tradition was founded in song and verse, which is the easiest way to remember large amounts of information. To progress through the order of druids one was required to learn literally tens of thousands of verses; indeed, one of the three orders of the druids was the bardic order itself. Thus, knowledge of astronomy, navigation, natural history, law, geneology, prediction of future events from current observation etc.etc was all contained in verse.

It seems to me that druidic tradition relates to the role of crop master/mistress and may well have grown from that tribal role in the original mother goddess peoples of western Europe. While the Celts were strongly independent as distinct clans/families/tribes, the druids provided an overall "glue" that held the larger society together, mediating stresses that arose between the independent groups; mention is made in historical sources of druids separating fighting armies and bringing an end to conflicts that threatened the larger whole.

It is interesting in our current cultural context to consider the lack of this role. While many people are well aware of the enormous environmental and social challenges we face, many are waiting for our "leaders" to do something, to get tough  and set the rules, restrict our activities (take fossil fuels "off the menu", for example).

However, our current cultural context is radically different. In tribal times, protection of the (whole) tribe and the environment was paramount and the main focus of tribal law was concerned with this. The individual was, to an extent, expendable. For us in "westernised" cultures however, the emphasis of law moved to the protection of the individual and the individuals property and it is only relatively recently that environmental laws have appeared.

From an integral perspective it seems to me that we need to accept this role in ourselves and for ourselves. It is for us as individuals to make the hard decisions to safeguard our communities and environments. In so doing we may find that it is not so hard after all, especially if we find supportive sisters and brothers to aid us in our choices.