Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 21

The ancient writers who comment on the druids say that they were the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the Celtic world, and that their function in society included not only presiding at religious ceremonies, but also serving as scientists, philosophers, counselors, mediators, and seers. In other words, they were not just otherworldly dreamers, but collectively served as the “think tank” of the ancient Celtic world. In the modern world, it’s easy to forget the intellectual/scientific dimension of the druids, but in ancient times such mental skill would have been an essential part of a druid’s life. The druids were not driven by intuition or psychic hunches (attending to those kinds of stimuli would have been the job of the seer, another specific function in Celtic society), but by knowledge, reason, and wisdom. That this mental agility was embedded in spiritual activity would not have been considered odd, for throughout the ancient world, science and religion had not yet undergone the divorce that would separate them at the dawn of the modern world. In the world of the druids, true wisdom meant being knowledgable about inner matters and external realities in a holistic and integrated way.