The Druids

Yes there were Druids
Some of them Lords
Know that they governed
With Mystic wards

Warrior Menders
From before Roman towns
The Druids remembered
They passed wisdom down

A Thirteen moon calender
Well did they comprehend
Star cycle awareness
Was knowledge they retained

From studying long
What was to see
From earth into infinity

Long lingering in wooded temple's glade
Led to certain observations that they made
Direct from living in the thrall
Of forest, sky, existance all

They knew genetic lineage of who and how begun
They understood precession and the angle of the sun

So knew when solstice or equinox time it would arrive
They kept goidelic memory banks very much alive

With song and story
Of life's law and glory

Inspired I A O from Awen
Given freely from space to them

These were the mystics and their mysteries
Long before our Warlords and their histories

We know little of these folk
Though pre-Greek 'Deru' means 'Oak'

And 'Weid' is wisdom to see or have vision
Which got spliced into 'Druid', a modernism

From Sotion of Alexandria, 3rd Century BCE
When Druids were first mentioned in our history

We have only fragments of knowledge about their day
That their sort were here is most that we can say

Our schools may have mentioned barbarian hordes
I think there was plainly a whole lot more

To be said about these curious men
Perhaps we can pick up their trail again

With conjecture and research to be done
It's unfolding as ever into the next one

In our lives and our seasons
Climates of change with reasons

For bringing to light
What's suppressed in the dark.

So Druids!

By this device of words;
Be heard!

And so be known
Come once more into your own

(Blame Robert Graves for me
He started this craze, fortunatly)

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Druids philosophised with ambassadors of distant lands
Linking up geometries overseas to far desert sands

Threading endless steppe to mountain range
Through marshy fen and grassy plaines

With a mathematics of a matching art
Showing us we are all a part

Of a continuum on creation marked
By Dragon Lode
Standing Stone
Ancestors Bone
Another known

And as the hawk is different to the dove
So they spoke war, peace, spirit or love

In proportion to the need there was
An Earth Mother their creed it was.

Speaking for all to hear
They had no mass media

But lasted long passing out
Life breath prayer by word of mouth.

Unwritten, known by all
Sounding forth from Tara Hall

And other Great Schools of Learning
That appeared as times were turning

To teach knowledge they felt worth the tell
The Beth-Luis-Nion tree Alpha-Beta to spell.

Ceremonial acts did mark
Winter, Summer, Light and Dark

Odin took runes from a tree
Bard, Ovate and Druidry

Three it is a holy trine
Oak and Ash and Thorn sublime

Four times seasons turning round
Intoning of the holy sound

All round Europe did they live
Guiding law they had to give.

Then a King could not rule a life
Without first approval of a wife

A Queen would have to authorise
Before a King he could 'Arise'.

A bard might bring him down again
Their satires could destroy such men.

Druids councilled for the Land
With which they entwined we understand
A harmony, a thread to lace
Society with a living trace
Of language tutored by the trees
We can but guess at what they perceived.

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Heard of human sacrifice?
This could be Caesar's artifice

Propaganda to hide
And justify a genocide.

Now bear in mind the length of time
Druids had been keeping up their rhymes

For why were placed the standing stones?
Is there something that we don't know?

I say for sacrifice they were not laid
Druids either by then in retrograde

Or Roman voices, all that remain
Have said it in a smear campaign

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Consider our great temples
From the Megalithic ages
That line up like one Serpent
Who upon Earth's surface ranges
Through virtue of forgotten tribes
And their technicians
Who used a scheme
Of exact mathematical precision
For purposes we can not recall
I mean, why did they build them all?

Were these stones placed for the need
To ritually slaughter men and beast
All so their Gods could be appeased?

An established practice,
Hard on the Glorified One
But from history's hindsight
It is best not to come on
From an accustomed superior moral position

I just feel there was another condition
Of being in connection with the land
Access to energies theirin contained known to every man

I imagine understanding of the order of all things
Of living in a balance that life in balance brings

Conveyed through ritual theatre
At specific times in the festival year

To align with the cosmic core
All together held in awe

At ceremonies of sound
Where people gathered round

To actively activate the atoms of the sun
At Stonehenge and at Avebury where gathered everyone

At Callenish and Carnac
At Newgrange and Maes Howe

Enoch had the measurements
(We can still apply them now)

To latitudes where sunlight's splinter
Through apperture in stone chamber in winter

Catches light of Venus
Moving love between us

Channelled through stone marked ley
Energies dance, make their way

Enhanced by ritual of ranking druids
Who kept the spectacle running fluid

With mnemonic words to recieve the orb
And so with the people be absorbed

Timeless in a moment
Waking from the dormant

Self, all Selves to be
As one a short eternity

At conjunction fleet
Where true selves would meet

Charged by spheres distant
Illumined for the instant

With sun to stone and soul to spark
Of life woken at the meeting place.
Hark!

Voices are telling of another time
Long did they speak and lo! They declined

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Romans had come to run them rout
Cared not what they were all about

Yet Roman records are the reason
That any memory of them lives on.

Tiberious Caesar, Diodorus Siculus
Pomponious Mela, Cicero and Suetonious,

Were Roman writers of their age
Telling of conquests they had made.

For these missives please
Give allowance and read
Between the lines
For any hidden
State campaign design.

History written by the victors
May well be written with a twist,
Later ages cannot figure
What the real story is.

Led on by false description
To suit the best depiction

Of another hellbent autocracy
Imposing state control.

For a former new world order
That finished the ancient world.

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Druid is an oft heard name
But no way were they all the same

From tribe to tribe no fixed abode
Different lands, one Mother Lode

Ten thousand years is all long gone
If we had but one snatch of song

From them it would reveal us much
Of a society of ceremony, such

Alas we can never know
But I am sure they put on quite some shows

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The last stronghold of Druidry
At Mona, Anglesey was held
When General Paulinious Suetonious
Ordered to smash incorrigable Celts

Icenian Tribes were rising to the East
Did Colchester, St Albans and London breach

Boadiccea swore vengeange on Romans to take
For her flogging in public and her daughters' rape

Romans had renaged on a co-rule agreement
Wanted it all and had thrown out the will

Of Pratsutagus, Boadicea's late husband
The war cry she made meant them all ill

So severe was the heat of her rallying
It nearly sent the Romans skidallying

So much so
She nearly got them to go

For:

Emperor Nero was near
To leaving the province
Of his conquest there
He wasn't convinced

Boudicca's defeat
At Watling Street
Was to mark a red turn
That made it complete

This secured central Roman rule
And their job was very near done
Smash native culture!
Do over the Druids!

These were the times AD 61

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Knowing druidic rites were in full swing
Suetonious chose the rite of spring

To march an army to Mona's sacred shore
And make a fest of blood and gore

The massacre saw many die
But it raised one awesome cry

The few that remained fought well
And soon of their end I shall duly tell:

First:

This rhyme I have realised
May well be idealised
Druids were another damn ruling class

Yet listen a bit closer
I'll give them their most yeah?
They performed many vital social tasks

As well as regulators of custom
And law

Their arbitrating jaws
Stopped many a war

As respected most high
From every side

They came between foe
To stand in the breach

And parley for truce.
They often brought peace.

They did all the rites
For marriage and death

In ceremonies the cycles
Of life expressed

They were the living memory
Of the tribes

They held it all
In their many-roomed minds

Metempsychosis or
Reincarnation,
They took on as true

To Pythagorus it is said
A latter influence is due.

But Druids had been round many a long age
Who knows from what heights they had decayed,

For we read from a thoroughly modern view
And a modern standard through and through.

What went on back there?
Interestingly, a few do care

What can we say for Druids?
I say they were human dudes
They also had a hierarchy
And power struggles too

There must have been corruption
I speak no golden age
Yet their's a time when sublime connection
Had been all the rage.

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The legionaires were frightened
As they stood upon the beach
With women dashing through their ranks
And gnashing of their teeth

With flaming sticks
Brandished in their hands
Like dread-haired banshees
Death dancing on the sand

Fearless warrior-men, too few
Viewed the Roman lines
Waiting to engage in battle
Surely just one last time

Druids raised up arms to pour
Improcations on all Roman war

The die was cast, the moment near
Curses made, they held no fear

But scanned about with aweful eyes
Like some creatures jeopardised

At first the troops froze at the sight
But General Paulinious rallied them outright

'Quail not at frenzied females,
You are the Emperor's men
Raise your standards strike hard now
Don't be disquieted by their row'

So they smote Druidic resistance that day
The modern world is what they made
So much ended then that's gone for good
Roman ambition invariably would

Engulf that which it could not contain
Turning it to romanised homogeny, hegemony all the same

Though tribes fought amongst themselves
All roads to Rome was a pagan death knell

Changing of their calendar
Would never Druids please

Paying tax to Caesar
Neither did agree

Romans banned round houses
Replaced them with the villa
Civilization was their game
These most efficient killers

They wrapped the sacred forest fortress
In a red shroud of flames
Who can now remember their names

Caught in their nuptuals
At height of ritual

Sneeked up on from behind
And plundered at will

Though last defence they bravely made
It wasn't enough to save their day

Routed through Europe to this Westerly Island
Here it was that the Druids had made their last stand.

At Anglesey the Druids were dead
Into the sea their memory bled