Origins . The Druidic movement originated among the
Romanticist ideas of the ancient druids that had begun to be developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. While many Early Mediaeval writers, particularly in Ireland, had demonised the ancient druids as barbarians who had practiced
human sacrifice and tried to suppress the coming of Christianity, certain Late Mediaeval writers had begun to extol what they believed were the virtues of the druids, and reinvented them as national heroes, particularly in Germany, France and Scotland. It was also during this period that
Conrad Celtis had begun to propagate the image of the druids as having been bearded, wise old men wearing white robes, something that would prove highly influential in future centuries. The image of the Iron Age druids as national heroes would later begin to emerge in England during the Early Modern period, with the
antiquarian and Anglican vicar
William Stukeley (1687–1765) proclaiming himself to be a "druid" and writing a number of popular books in which he claimed that prehistoric
megaliths like
Stonehenge and
Avebury were temples built by the druids, something now known to be incorrect. Stukeley himself, being a devout but unorthodox Christian, felt that the ancient druids had been followers of a
monotheistic faith very similar to Christianity, at one point even stating that ancient druidry was "so extremely like Christianity, that in effect, it differed from it only in this; they believe in
a Messiah who was to come into the world, as we believe in him that is come". Soon after the publication and spread of Stukeley's writings, other people also began to self-describe themselves as "druids" and form societies: the earliest of these was the Druidic Society, founded on the Welsh island of
Anglesey in 1772. Largely revolving around ensuring the continued financial success of business on the island, it attracted many of Anglesey's wealthy inhabitants into it, and donated much of its proceeds to charity, but was disbanded in 1844. A similar Welsh group was the Society of the Druids of Cardigan, founded circa 1779, largely by a group of friends who wished to attend "literary picnics" together. The third British group to call itself Druidic was English rather than Welsh, and was known as the
Ancient Order of Druids. Founded in 1781 and influenced by
Freemasonry, its origins have remained somewhat unknown, but it subsequently spread in popularity from its base in London across much of Britain and even abroad, with new lodges being founded, all of which were under the control of the central Grand Lodge in London. The Order was not religious in structure, and instead acted as somewhat of a social club, particularly for men with a common interest in music. In 1833 it suffered a schism, as a large number of dissenting lodges, unhappy at the management of the Order, formed the
United Ancient Order of Druids, and both groups would go on to grow in popularity throughout the rest of the century.
Development of religious structure None of the earliest modern Druidic groups had been religious in structure; however, this was to change in the late 18th century, primarily because of the work of a Welshman who took the name of
Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826). Born as Edward Williams, he would take up the cause of
Welsh nationalism, and was deeply opposed to the British monarchy, supporting many of the ideals of the
French Revolution, which had occurred in 1789. Eventually moving to London, he began perpetuating the unproved claim that he was actually one of the last initiates of a surviving group of druids who were descended from those found in the Iron Age, centred on his home county of
Glamorgan. He subsequently organised the performing of Neo-druidic rituals on
Primrose Hill with some of his followers, whom he categorised as either Bards or Ovates, with he himself being the only one actually categorised as a Druid. He himself practiced a form of religion he believed the ancient druids had, which involved the worship of a singular monotheistic deity as well as the acceptance of
reincarnation. In Wales, Druidry had taken on an explicitly religious formation by the 1840s. , a prominent modern Druid Morganwg's example was taken up by other Welshmen in the 19th century, who continued to promote religious forms of Druidry. The most prominent figure in this was
William Price (1800–1893), a physician who held to ideas such as vegetarianism and the political
Chartist movement. His promotion of cremation and open practice of it led to his arrest and trial, but he was acquitted, achieving a level of fame throughout Britain. He would declare himself to be a Druid, and would do much to promote the return of what he believed, without any independently verified evidence, was an ancient religion in his country. In 1874,
Robert Wentworth Little, a Freemason who achieved notoriety as the first Supreme Magus of the occult
Societas Rosicruciana, allegedly founded the
Ancient and Archaeological Order of Druids, which, like the Societas Rosicruciana, was an esoteric organisation. Meanwhile, at the start of the 20th century, Druidic groups began holding their ceremonies at the great megalithic monument of
Stonehenge in
Wiltshire, England: the historian
Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it" as they realised that the structure dated from the
Neolithic and early
Bronze Age, millennia before the Iron Age, when the druids first appear in the historical record. One member of the Ancient Order of Druids was the English
Gerald Gardner, who in the 1960s invented
Wicca.
In Britain The most important figure for the rise of Neopagan Druidry in Britain was
Ross Nichols. A member of
The Druid Order, in 1964 he split off to found the
Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD). In 1988
Philip Carr-Gomm was asked to lead the Order. Nichols drew upon ideas from the
Earth mysteries movement, incorporating many of its ideas about Glastonbury into his interpretation of Druidry. Between 1985 and 1988, the Druid
Tim Sebastion campaigned for religious access to Stonehenge, forming the
Secular Order of Druids (SOD) around him. In the late 1980s, SOD's campaign was joined by another group focused on Stonehenge access, led by a Druid calling himself
King Arthur Pendragon; by 1993, his group had formalised as the Loyal Arthurian Warband. In 1988, a Druid order was also established in Glastonbury, Somerset, under the leadership of
Rollo Maughfling. In the late 1970s, the former
Alexandrian Wiccan high priest
Philip Shallcrass established the
British Druid Order (BDO) to create a more explicitly Pagan form of Druidry. Fellow Druid
Emma Restall Orr became co-leader of the group in the mid-1990s. Feeling the system of Orders too limiting, in 2002 Orr created
The Druid Network, which was officially launched in 2003. The early 1990s were—according to the historian
Ronald Hutton—"boom years" for British Druidry. In 1989, the
Council of British Druid Orders was established to co-ordinate the activities of different Druid groups at the national level. Further reflecting this spirit of unity, in 1992 a rite took place on London's
Primrose Hill in which various Druid orders participated. That year, two new Druidic magazines began publication Shallcrass' ''Druid's Voice'' and Steve Wilson's
Aisling. However, arguments between different groups persisted and in 1996, the AOD, OBOD, and BDO withdrew from the Council of British Druid Orders. In the late 1990s,
English Heritage relented to pressure and agreed to allow Druidic and greater public access to Stonehenge. During the 1990s, Pagan Druidic groups were also established in Italy, with British Druids like Carr-Gomm visiting the country to give talks to the Pagan community. The Anglesey Druid Order, founded in
Wales 1999, centers
Welsh mythology and the
Welsh language.
In North America The earliest American Druid organizations were fraternal orders such as the
United Ancient Order of Druids and the
American Order of Druids. The former was a branch of a British organization that had split from the
Ancient Order of Druids, while the latter was founded in
Massachusetts in 1888. Both were forms of fraternal benefit societies rather than religious or neo-pagan groups. In 1963, the
Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was founded by students at
Carleton College,
Northfield, Minnesota, a liberal arts college that required its members to attend their choice of weekly religious services. As a form of humorous protest against this rule, a group of students, who contained Christians, Jews and agnostics within their ranks, decided to create their own, non-serious religious group. Their protest was successful, and the college's requirement was scrapped in 1964. Nonetheless, the group continued holding services. These were not considered Neopagan by most members, but rather as inter-religious. From its beginning, the RDNA encouraged the veneration of the natural world, personified as
Mother Earth, holding that religious truth could be found through nature. They also adopted other elements of Neopaganism, such as celebrating the festivals of the
Wheel of the Year, borrowed from the Neopagan religion of
Wicca. While the RDNA founded new branches or "groves" around the United States, the Neopagan elements of the RDNA eventually rose to prominence, leading several groves to describe themselves as Neopagan. This was opposed by several of the group's founders, who wanted it to retain its inter-religious origins, and some groves actually emphasized their connection to other religions: there was a group of
Zen Druids in Olympia and
Hassidic Druids in St. Louis. Among those responsible for the transition towards Neopaganism were
Isaac Bonewits and Robert Larson from a grove located in
Berkeley, California. Believing that the Reformed Druidic movement should accept that it was essentially Neopagan in nature, Bonewits founded a split-off group, the New Reformed Druids of North America (NRDNA), which he defined as an "Eclectic Reconstructionist Neo-Pagan Priestcraft, based primarily upon Gaulish and Celtic sources". Bonewits still felt that many in the RDNA were hostile towards him, believing that he had infiltrated their group, and so in 1985 he founded a new, explicitly Neopagan Druidic group,
Ár nDraíocht Féin (Our Own Druidism; a.k.a. ADF) and began publishing a journal, ''The Druid's Progress''. Arguing that it should draw from pan-European sources, rather than just those that were considered "Celtic", he placed an emphasis on academic and scholarly accuracy, taking a stand against what he perceived as the prevalent pseudo-historical ideas of many Neopagans and Druids. In 1986, several members of Ár nDraíocht Féin openly criticized Bonewits for his pan-European approach, wishing modern Druidism to be inspired purely by Celtic sources, and so they splintered off to form a group called the
Henge of Keltria. The Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), currently headed by Pagan author and druid
John Michael Greer, was founded as the Ancient Order of Masonic Druids in America in 1912 in Boston, Mass. The founder, James Manchester had obtained a charter from the Ancient Order of Masonic Druids of England (AOMD). AOMD started in 1874 as the Ancient Archaeological Order of Druids (AAOD) by Robert Wentworth Little, the founder of
Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA). SRIA is the immediate predecessor organization of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD). In 1972, the Ancient Order of Masonic Druids in America changed its name to the current name the Ancient Order of Druids in America and started initiating women, which it had not done so previously because of its masonic origin. It was also at this time that AOMD denied ever having recognized AOMDA and wasn't interested in doing so at that time. ==Demographics==