A druid was a member of the high-ranking priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. While they were reported to have been literate, they are believed to have been prevented by doctrine from recording their knowledge in written form. Their beliefs and practices are attested in some detail by their contemporaries from other cultures, such as the Romans and the Greeks.

This Saturday morning on the last day of September, an impressively picturesque day lathered with azure sky and uncommonly balmy air, we had the unforeseen privilege to encounter a druid.

Druids are concerned with the natural world and its powers, and considered trees sacred, particularly the oak. Druidism can be described as a shamanic religion, as it relied on a combination of contact with the spirit world and holistic medicines to treat (and sometimes cause) illnesses.

Druidry, sometimes termed Druidism, is a modern spiritual or religious movement that promotes the cultivation of honorable relationships with the physical landscapes, flora, fauna, and diverse peoples of the world, as well as with nature deities, and spirits of nature and place.

While I wouldn’t presume to suggest that the recognition of a druid is by any means self-evident, given the proper circumstances such as to allay even for a fraction of a moment the thriving confusion of the Universe, the individual distinction pierces the ethereal atmosphere and is instantly apparent.  This was the case today when, having engaged ourselves in an early morning enterprise dear to my heart (the object of which I prefer not to mention lest I should appear to capitalize upon my fortuity), I found myself as though by sudden magic overhearing a druid speak upon hieratic matters. The overwhelming nutrition of this unanticipated conjunction was instantly felt.

It behooves me to reduce the inexpressible elixir of which I unwittingly imbibed to its earthly ingredients; namely, forthrightness, clarity and functionality. I consider it no small compliment to encounter a man who speaks his mind, motivated neither by vulgarity nor self-improvement, rather by the critical and elemental truths of life. I am reminded for example that the robe of the solicitor is an accessory, a deferral only to superficial expectation rather than any demonstration of internal aptitude.

Such I surmise is the conviction of the druid; namely, substance defeats cosmetics. It can be a hard thesis, not easily or readily digestible. It may promote a vast array of social complications too tedious for the mind to absorb. Yet the druid is undeterred. If inconvenience or everyday incommodious details were the only obstruction, the druid will have nothing to do with it. Instead the druid promotes and affords an unaccustomed spiritual vitality. Nor are these insinuations covered in priestly robes. The druid moves among us often unperceived.