The Druid Network | Contemplative Inquiry

April 11, 2025

MODERN DRUIDS (RONALD HUTTON) 2 MODERN DRUID MOVEMENTS

Modern Druids is the most recent public lecture (2 April 2025) presented by Professor Ronald Hutton in his tenure as Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London. I provide a link below (1). This is the second of two posts about the lecture, focusing on Modern Druid movements in Britain from 1781. The first, concerning Hutton’s take on early modern perceptions of ancient Druidry, is published at https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/04/08/ . It distinguishes four understandings, named by Hutton as Nationalist, Green, Demonic and Confessional.

Turning to modern Druid movements, Hutton also distinguishes four different kinds, emerging from the later eighteenth century up to the present:

Masonic Druids The Ancient Order of Druids was launched in London in 1781, as a closed society with initiation rites, secret memberships, signs and passwords, loosely modelled on Masonry. Its purpose was to give working men opportunities for participation in the performing arts. By 1820 it had become a huge success, moving beyond London to the Midlands and North of England. Some members wanted more focus on the insurance side of friendly society life, and in 1833 the United Ancient Order of Druids was formed, splitting off from the AOD. The UAOD lasted until the late twentieth century. The original AOD still exists.
Theosophical Druids emerged in the period from 1910 as an esoteric spiritual group. It followed the ideals of the Theosophical Society and worked towards the recovery of ancient mystical wisdom from all religions and philosophies. Founded by George Watson MacGregor Reid, and originally called the Order of the Universal Bond, the new group mixed Egyptian, Greek, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist ideas with Irish and Welsh literature and using Druid names, roles and status. In 1912 a group of members went to Stonehenge to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Increasingly identified as The Ancient Druid Order they continued their association with Stonehenge for over 70 years. Always unpopular with the archaeologists of that period, the ADO sometimes had the support of the government and site administrators and sometimes not. In 1985 the festival that had grown up on the site was banned under Margaret Thatcher.
New Age Druids is the name Hutton gives to the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids (OBOD). The first iteration of OBOD was a split-off from the ADO in 1964 led by Ross Nichols, who took the new group to Glastonbury for their public ceremonies. On his death in 1975, the Order went into hibernation until 1988, when Philip Carr-Gomm, who had been a youthful apprentice of Ross Nichols, re-awakened it. By 1988 the human potential movement, and a new Celtic revival strand in western alternative spiritualty, were both gathering in strength. True to its Theosophical roots, OBOD declared itself to be a spirituality rather than a religion and opened itself up to people of all religions and none. The bulk of the membership identified as either Pagan, Christian or Buddhist. OBOD declared an aim of “uniting humans with the natural world and their own true selves”, to “heal the disorientation implicit for many in an urbanised and atomised social existence” and “to give peace”. Hutton goes on to mention The British Druid Order (BDO) and The Druid Network (TDN) but doesn’t say much about them. Although they hived off from OBOD, dual or multiple membership is common.
Counter Cultural Druids When the Stonehenge Festival was banned in 1985, many people felt they had lost a clergy and a temple as well as a festival. Some wanted to fight for a religion they saw as under attack. (Hutton does not specifially mention the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’.) The single most prominent leader who arose was Arthur Pendragon, ex-soldier, ex-biker gang leader, and mystic. He was prominently associated with the Glastonbury Order of Druids (GOD), the Secular Order of Druids (SOD) and the Loyal Arthurian Warband (LAW). These groups campaigned for civil liberties and preservation of the countryside. They held demonstrations against laws that limited the former, and organised protest camps on the routes of controversial road and building schemes. Arthur was frequently prosecuted and invariably acquitted by juries. Hutton identifies Arthur as part of a long tradition of working class protest, in which the use of costume and theatre is used to make disempowered people visible. Arthur himself had a more mystical view of his mission. Once, while looking for a sign, he noticed an attractive ceremonial sword in a local shop. Asked where it had come from, he was told that it had been Excalibur in the movie of that name.

Modern Druidry in Britain continues to mutate and develop, but Hutton ends his analysis at this point. I recommend readers to visit the link below and draw their own conclusions.

(1) https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/modern-druids/

May 26, 2016

RE-DEDICATION

bcf2c26ec7720ed734fccc2b13534310 Early this morning, I re-dedicated my contemplative inquiry. Yesterday was my 67^th birthday. It seems like a good moment for re-visioning and renewal. I recently received my Sophia icon from Hrana Janto* and finally understood that my contemplative inquiry is itself my Way of Sophia. I don’t see this as a project – more as an ongoing life practice. My contemplative Druid work and exploration of the Headless Way are aspects of inquiry, and this re-dedication is an integrating move.

The original dedication was at Samhain 2011. It assumed a Druid and specifically OBOD context, and I did see it as a project. I didn’t give it a timescale, but later I thought in terms of 5 years. The re-dedication comes a few months short of that, at a time when – amidst many continuities – there has been a clear shift in focus.

Today I made use of the icon, entered into a reflective space, before deepening into an Innerworld journey. Working with imagery puts me in a realm of what James Hillman (1) understands by ‘soul’ work. For him, soul (or psyche, or anima) is “a perspective, rather than a substance, a view point towards things rather than a thing in itself … by soul, I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image and fantasy – that mode which recognizes all meanings as primarily symbolic or metaphorical”. For Hillman, soul makes meaning possible and turns events into experiences. It is communicated in love, and characteristically has a religious concern.

In my morning ritual, I open my heart to the wisdom of Sophia and gaze at my icon. I remember and appreciate the initial inquiry – writing articles for OBOD’s member journal Touchstone; gradually bringing people together, holding the first events, launching the Contemplative Druidry Facebook Group, connecting with people in other Druid bodies (The Druid Network and Order of the Sacred Nemeton in particular); developing a monthly meeting cycle for the home group; writing the Contemplative Druidry book, offering contemplative Druid events to the wider Druid and fellow-travelling public, including both day retreats and a residential. This feels good to recall, because sometimes I think that the project hasn’t spread very far or been widely understood, mostly through my own limitations and relative reclusiveness. Here I can focus on what has been achieved, and allow myself to recognize that there is something to appreciate.

Completing this period of reflection, I close my eyes and slip into Sophia’s Innerworld nemeton, which takes the form of a walled garden. At the centre is a fountain surrounded by four rose beds separated by run-offs. Two of the beds hold white roses, and two hold red. There are seats around the fountain, big enough for two people, on all four sides. The rest of the garden is more of an orchard with many kinds of fruit tree, including some trained up the garden walls. These walls are brick, and have an eighteenth century feel. The orchard isn’t over-manicured. It might indeed be described as slightly unkempt, though not with any sense of neglect. When I visit this garden, the Sophia of the icon may sit opposite or beside me. But she may also take different forms – a dove, a rose, a tree, the fountain itself. She may be another bird or creature that turns up in the space. She may be sunlight in a drop of water. I may also experience her as all of it, so that goddess and nemeton are one. She is always a friend and guide.

This time she is in her icon form, though the dove is in a tree and the chalice by her side as she sits opposite me, in the late May dawn, east facing west. I go into my headless state and know that the same is true of her. But the context (the Innerworld, in this garden, with Sophia) changes the state, making it more intimate, relational and local. I like it. In my heart, I have more care about the particularities, indeed vagaries, of the writing than the pristine emptiness of the paper that holds them, though both perspectives matter and they do belong together. If form is nothing but emptiness, and emptiness nothing but form, then what we always have is paper being written on, and it is the story writing itself that mostly draws a storying monkey like me.

As this thought, within my living dream of the garden, passes through, Sophia comes to sit beside me. We are simply companionable, watching the fountain, as the clear fresh water bubbles up. It is from an inexhaustible spring. In this archetypal garden setting, Sophia renews an eternal pledge – that wisdom’s commitment is to extend and transmute knowledge, and not to repress it. And in this moment the garden, the fountain and Sophia begin to fade …

I came away from my ritual of re-dedication feeling encouraged and refreshed, and a new cycle begins from here.

*http://Hrana.Janto.com

(1) Hillman, James The essential James Hillman: A blue fire London: Routledge, 1990. (Introduced and edited by Thomas Moore)

3 Comments

October 21, 2014

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID RETREATS

Following the publication of ‘Contemplative Druidry’* I have been working on a residential retreat programme. It is likely that three of us from the Gloucestershire group (discussed in the book) will be offering a pilot next April, sponsored by OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). The proposed venue will take up to 20 people, which will allow us to do some real relationship and community building as well as sharing some of our practices. We don’t simply want to roll out a programme. Indeed, we hope to enrich our own work by learning from participants and extending our circle to include them if they wish it.

For me, the only way to strengthen the contemplative thread in Druidry is to build our work in a spirit of open inquiry and sharing, as well as holding a space for tranquillity and renewal through the practices themselves. This is why we are extending the work cautiously. We also hope to offer something at Druid Camp, Lughnasadh 2015, since many of the people in our local group and in the book are involved in The Druid Network. It’s not just an OBOD thing. Samhain this year will be the third anniversary of my commitment to a contemplative inquiry within Druidry. I’m looking forward to what the fourth year may bring.

*Contemplative Druidry is an Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing venture, involving me in learning a variety of new skills, and is mostly based on interviews with people involved in Druid contemplative practice. It includes a foreword by OBOD’s Philip Carr-Gomm.