druids were they evil?do u worship them?

sugardaddy

hi i was watching a documentary called castle ghosts of ireland and it said that druids although they were said to have plenty of wisdom it also said that they had plenty of human sacrifices to the gods such as burn people alive in a giant wicker man just like in the film the wicker man and and even buried people alive and impaled them on spikes,so this to me seems pretty evil so if some people out there are worshiping the same gods as the druids do u think that there is a danger of some mad eccentricks doing a human sacrifice?i think that the druids were evil and i dont fell comfortable with people seeing them in a high regard or glorified light

Nevyn

At the time Druid were the keepers of the laws and would with the kings
pass judgement and scentence on people.
This could range from a fine, to being made an bonds man for a certain time
and even up as far as a death scentence.
For such crimes where against not just peole but the land and the Gods.
There were no prisons and sometimes banishment was not enough of a
punishment or a deterent to others.

Such trangressors would be made work as bondsmen and then at Shaimen
thier lifes were ended, removing thier dishonour from them,
thier people and the land and apeasing the Gods before the harsh winter to come.
It was done humanly usually with sedative herbs and drink and then then
they person was either drowned or thier neck slit.

There has been no edivence of people being burned here or stuffed into
wiccer constructs.

People were not as distant from death as we are today. It was talked about
and with peoples life spans being a lot shorter and the child mortality rate
quite high, death in the family and the community was common nevermind
wars and raiding parties. You would not go 14 years of living and not know death.

In this day and age you are not going to get some one claiming to be a
druid doing human scarifice, unless they are are complete nutjob and
then it is cos they are a nutjob and not a self styled druid.

Talliesin

sugardaddy wrote:

i think that the druids were evil

That's a pretty strong opinion to come to on the basis of a television show. I'm with Groucho Marx in finding television very educational, as whenever someone turns on a set I go into another room and read a book.

There is one piece of clear historical evidence to suggest that the Druids engaged in human sacrifice. That evidence was written by a military opponent of the Celtic Britons (Julius Caesar) so make of that what you will.

Human sacrifice has been practiced by many religions (e.g. the Christian Churches used to kill people believing that their God was happier with those particular people being killed than left alive, which is essentially what "human sacrifice" is). In China, Iran, Vietnam, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Singapore, Yemen and Belarus people are regularly sacrificed to the Gods of Justice and Order. At the time of the Druids there weren't really any cultures around that didn't execute criminals.

Now, if someone wanted to make a human sacrifice other than of a comdemned criminal you'd need a society that allowed you to do so and a willing sacrifice. That would take more than one, or even a few, nut-jobs to bring about.

sugardaddy

ok perhaps i have jumped the gun a bit by baseing my opinions on a televsion documentary but i just assumed what was said was all fact but im going to trust the judgment of people here and have faith that they know a lot on the subject.i had no idea that human sacrifice was such a common thing back then but is it now?i mean correct me if im wrong and i may be but i think that a while ago the body of a five year old boy was found in the thames and was said to have been used in a sacrifice i think the body was all cut up,im fairly certain that i heard that on the news,i`ll check it up on the internet and see

Nevyn

In this day and age murder is murder.
and those that break the law for what ever reason are held accountible.
we value human life and children a lot higher then in centures past
and I really doubt you would find anyone who is really pagan in ireland
things about, or doing or getting away with such things.

Rev Hellfire

Something you also have to remember about human sacrafice is that the victims where not always unwilling. The idea that they where dragged kicking and screaming was not always the case.

Talliesin

sugardaddy wrote:

ok perhaps i have jumped the gun a bit by baseing my opinions on a televsion documentary but i just assumed what was said was all fact

Television is a poor medium for education at the best of times. It can be a good medium for conveying the flavour of something - which it does better through fiction than documentary - but I've rarely seen any television program on a topic I am knowledgable about that I felt satisfied with. Of course the fact that I just don't like television skews my perception of the value of television documentary.

sugardaddy wrote:

but im going to trust the judgment of people here and have faith that they know a lot on the subject.

Why? I'm not saying that our judgement isn't trustworthy, but learning who to trust on what and when is something that it's important to learn in itself. You don't know me, you don't know the other posters. You're going to have to check these things out deeper than our say-so before you can say you really know what's what here.

In particular you expressed an interest in Wicca and Witchcraft on earlier threads. If you go down that route you may end up working with people as a coven. Coven's operate on Perfect Love and Perfect Trust. An implication of that is you have to make pretty damn sure that you are giving that trust to people who deserve it.

sugardaddy wrote:

i had no idea that human sacrifice was such a common thing back then

Just how common is hard to say.

sugardaddy wrote:

but is it now?

Depends where you draw the line as to what is and isn't human sacrifice. To my mind any form of capital punishment can be considered human sacrifice - all that changes is who or what the sacrifice is made to.

sugardaddy wrote:

i mean correct me if im wrong and i may be but i think that a while ago the body of a five year old boy was found in the thames and was said to have been used in a sacrifice i think the body was all cut up

It's hard to say what the motives were there, especially since we don't have the sort of information on the body that the police would keep to themselves. Maybe the body was cut up merely to assist disposal and to hamper identification. If the murder and/or dismemberment was ritualised in some manner that ritual may have been no more than part of the modus operandi of a psycho-sexual killer. The most common pattern of ritualised murder in many parts of the world are not done in the name of religion or for the purpose of magic but rather because the victim is suspected of being a magic-worker of some sort and the ritualised aspect is believed to either control the victim after they pass or in other ways protect the perpetrator and/or the perpetrator's society from the victim. As such the perpetrators tend to be scared members of whatever the dominant faith is in their area acting upon a superstition, rather than performing a sacrifice.

In all, we simply don't know what happened in the minds of those who killed that poor child, but that it was a sacrifice of some kind seems far from the most likely possibility.

ArdRi79

Sacrifice is a common thing nowadays, despite the media image most druids are sane and educated and like most people find even animal sacrifice abhorrant. Sacrifces today are done using the appropriate plants.

Here is a paper on the subject
http://www.fhaoil-choin.org/sacrifice.htm

As for the story you read about the boy cut up there are two things you have to remember when reading it,

1. is the paper sensationalising the story to sell copies

2. has the murderer tried to make it look like a pagan thing to throw the police off. Most mundane murderers turn out to be family members.

One of the most important things when treading a pagan path is to question everything you are told and everything you read because even the most educated person can make mistakes.

Paganism like all religion requires study. Infact lawyers, doctors and archaeologists number among the pagans I have met recently. Not the wild bushmen who rant at the stars like a charactor froma horror movie but students and that is what we all must become when taking up a religous path.

And with the exception of the Gods who were the first healers (Dian Cecht for example) no you dont worship Druids. A Druid is like a priest.