Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

DRUIDICAL
DRUSES 221
of three triple threads was deemed holy ; so
were three drops of water in Brittany, and the
same number of drops of blood in Mexico .
Druidieal Mysteries . The Druids were
a sacred order of priests who existed in Britain
and Gaul, but whose mystical rites were
practised in most perfection in the former
country, where the isle of Anglesea was considered
as their principal seat. Higgins
thinks that they were also found in Germany,
but against this opinion we have the positive
statement of Ciesar .
The meanings given to the word have been
very numerous and most of them wholly untenable
. The komans, seeing that they worshiped
in groves of oak, because that tree was
peculiarly sacred among them, derived their
name from the Greek word, opus, drus; thus
absurdly seeking the etymology of a word of
an older language in one comparatively modem
. Their derivation would have been
more reasonable had they known that in
Sanskrit druma is an oak, from dru, wood . It
has also been traced to the Hebrew with equal
incorrectness, for the Druids were not of the
Semitic race. Its derivation is rather to be
sought in the Celtic language . The Gaelic
word Druiah signifies a holy or wise man ; in a
bad sense a magician ; and this we may readily
trace to the Aryan druh, applied to the spirit
of night or darkness, whence we have the
Zend dru, a magician . Druidism was a mystical
profession, and in the olden time mystery
and magic were always confounded . Vallencey
(Coll . Reb. Hib ., iii ., 503) says : "Welsh, Drud,
a Druid, i. e . the absolver or remitter of sins ;
so the Irish Drui, a Druid, most certainly is
from the Persic duru, a good and holy man" ;
and Ousely (Coll . Orient., iv., 302) adds to this
the Arabic dart, which means a wise man .
Bosworth (A . S . Dict.) gives dry, pronounced
dru, as the Anglo-Saxon for "a magician, sorcerer
druid ." Probably with the old Celts
the Druids occupied the same place as the
Magi did with the old Persians .
Druidism was divided into three orders or
degree, which were beginning with the lowest,
the Bards, the Prophets, and the Druids.
Higgins thinks that the prophets were the
lowest order, but he admits that it is not
generally allowed . The constitution of the
Order was in many respects like that of the
Freemasons . In every country there was an
Arch-Druid in whom all authority was placed .
In Britain it is said that there were under him
three arch-flamens or priests, and twentyfive
flamens. There was an annual assembly
for the administration of justice and the
making of laws, and, besides, four quarterly
meetings, which took place on the days when
the sun reached his equinoctial and solstitial
points . The latter two would very nearly
correspond at this time with the festivals of
St . John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist
. It was not lawful to commit their
ceremonies or doctrines to writing, and Cnsar
says (Bell. Gall., vi., 14) that they used the
Greek letters, which was, of course, as a cipher ;
but Higgins (p . 90) says that one of the Irish
Ogum alphabets, which Toland calls secret
writing, ` was the on~nal, sacred, and secret
character of the Druids ."
The places of worship, which were also
places of initiation, were of various forms :
circular, because a circle was an emblem of
the universe ; or oval, in allusion to the mundane
egg, from which, according to the Egyptians,
our first parents issued ; or serpentine,
because a serpent was a symbol of Hu, the
druidical Noah ; or winged, to represent the
motion of the Divine Spirit ; or cruciform,
because a cross was the emblem of regeneration
. Their only covering was the clouded
canopy, because they deemed it absurd to
confine the Omnipotent beneath a roof ; and
they were constructed of embankments of
earth, and of unhewn stones, unpolluted with
a metal tool . Nor was anyone permitted to
enter their sacred retreats, unless he bore a
chain.
The ceremony of initiation into the Druidical
Mysteries required much preliminary
mental preparation and physical purification .
The aspirant was clothed with the three
sacred colors, white, blue, and green ; white
as the symbol of Light, blue of Truth, and
green of Hope. When the rites of initiation
were passed, the tri-colored robe was changed
for one of green- in the Second Degree, the
candidate was clothed in blue ; and having
surmounted all the dangers of the Third, and
arrived at the summit of perfection,he received
the red tiara and flowing mantle of purest
white. The ceremonies were numerous, the
physical proofs painful, and the mental trials
appalling . They commenced in the First
Degree, with placing the as ~~i~rant in the
pastos, bed or coffin, where his symbolical
death was represented, and they terminated
in the Third, by his regeneration or restoration
to life from the womb of the giantess
Ceridwin, and the committal of the body of
the newly born to the waves in a small boat,
symbolical of the ark . The result was,
generally, that he succeeded in reaching the
safe landing-place but if his arm was weak,
or his heart failed, death was the almost inevitable
consequence . If he refused the trial
through timidity, he was contemptuously
rejected, and declared forever ineligible to
participate in the sacred rites . But if he
undertook it and succeeded, he was joyously
invested with all the privileges of Druidism .
The doctrines of the Druids were the same
as those entertained by Pythagoras. They
taught the existence of one Supreme Being ;
a future state of rewards and punishments ;
the immortality of the soul, and a metempsychosis
; and the object of their mystic rites
was to communicate these doctrines in symbolic
language an object and a method common
alike to Druidism to the Ancient Mysteries
and to Modern freemasonry .
Druses. A sect of mystic religionists who
inhabit Mounts Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon,
in Syria. They settled there about the tenth
century and are said to be a mixture of Cuthites
or Kurds, Mardi Arabs, and possibly of