Ossian Collection > Druidism

THE CREED OF DRUIDISM 45
But rush undaunted on the pointed steel ;
Provoke approaching death and bravely scorn
To spare that life which must so soon return."
Diodorus Siculus says that they held that " the souls of men are
undying, and after completing their term of existence they pass into
another body." Edward Williams declares that this doctrine of metem-
psychosis is that which, of all others, most clearly vindicates the ways of
God to men, is countenanced by many passages in the New Testament,
believed in by many, if not all, the early Christians, and by the Essenes,
at least, among the Jews. In Irish tradition. Find MacCumall, the
celebrated Irish hero, is described as being killed at the Battle of D'Athbrea
in A.D. 273, and being reborn in a.d. 601, and again later still as King
of Ireland. D'Arbois de Jubainville states that the belief in reincarnation
went back to ancient times in Ireland. Long before our era, Eochaid
Airem, supreme King of Ireland, espoused Elain, daughter of Etar.
Elain had several centuries before been born in Celtic lands as Aihill,
wife of Mider, and she was deified after her death. The Celtic doctrine,
after being lost for centuries, made its reappearance in modern France,
where it was reconstructed and sustained by a pleiades of brilliant
writers : Charles Bonnet, Dupont de Nemours, Ballanche, Jean Reynaud,
Henri Martin, Pierre Larouy, Victor Hugo, Flammarion, and many
others.
The Druids, apparently, were believers in a kind of evolution,
maintaining that the soul began its course in the lowest water animalculse
and passed through several successive graduated bodies until it reached
the human species. This belief laid a restraint upon them in their
choice of animals for food, and though no restriction was placed upon
the choice of animals for sacrifice, they abstained from killing for domestic
purposes all animals except those which might directly or indirectly
eventually cause the death of man. According to some writers, the
Druids believed that the whole of the animated creation was in a state
of gradual transmigration from the animal to the human, but that the
soul was immortal and must be perfected for a higher state of existence.
In the human state it was in a condition of liberty, good and evil being
held to be equally balanced. Some writers maintain that, at death, if
the good qualities preponderated over the evil, the soul would pass into
Gwynvyd, or the state of bUss, but that if the evil qualities preponderated,
then the soul would pass into an animal displaying the characteristics
exhibited by the human being while on earth, though it would have
further opportunities of re-ascent to the human and of ultimate trans-
lation to Gwynvyd, even though repeated falls should postpone the latter
step for ages. Other writers, again, have maintained that the Druids
endeavoured to persuade their followers that death was but an interlude