Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Driiidical Mysticism. ^-3
stones of Druids, of raising the dead, and striking dead
the opponents of the Saint, have no reference to this Oriental
mysticism ;
but the latter appears in later Lives of the Irish
and Welsh Saints.
Whence came this occultism into the Church ?
The introduction of it may be largely attributed to the
Templars. They were accused of magic, and lost everything
thereby. As students, not less than fighting monks,
they learned much of Oriental m}'sticism, and may have
been a prominent means of introducing ancient heresies
into Britain and France. Their destruction from the
orthodox point of view was justified. No one can look at
that symbol in the roof of London Temple Church, and on
English Church banners elsewhere, without recognizing the
heathenism so conspicuous in Welsh Druidism.
But why this Eastern philosophy should find a special
retreat in the Triads of mediaeval Wales is by no means
clear. It is, however, a singular fact that the introduction
of this mysticism appeared almost simultaneously in the
Sufuism of Persian Mahometanism, as exhibited in the poems
of Hafiz, Sadi, &c., and is still to be found in the sect of
the Dancing Dervishes. Did it reach Wales through Spain
and France 1 There is little or no evidence of Gnosticism
—so full of more ancient and pagan symbolism—penetrating
to the British Isles ;
though the later development
of the Middle Ages abounded in Gnostic ideas.
As this peculiarity would appear to have entered A\'alcs
in the early Norman period, during the Crusades, \\\\y was
it not evidenced in Ireland t Did the Norman conquerors,
who became more Irishy than the Irish, from their devotion
to the Irish Brehon law, which gave chiefs so much power
and property, decline to patronize therein the new learning }
The Irish King of Ulster, Mongan, recollected his first
life as Find, though two centuries before. Tuan was twice