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Updated: May 1, 2025
In reference to the Druidism on the continent, history records the fact that when one of the reigning kings became a convert to Christianity the whole of his subjects were baptized into the Church of Rome by Imperial decree.
"More desolate than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. We don't believe in Egyptian mythology, but the Egyptians did; and I suppose even the Druids believed in Druidism. But the eighteenth-century gentleman who built these temples didn't believe in Venus or Mercury any more than we do; that's why the reflection of those pale pillars in the lake is truly only the shadow of a shade.
The Greco-Roman Paganism was, at this time, far more powerful than Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and destitute of all religious vitality. It was the religion of the conquerors and of the state, and was invested, in that quality, with real power; but, beyond that, it had but the power derived from popular customs and superstitions.
Up sprang the rude gods of the North and the resuscitated Druidism, passing from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of crommell and idol.
The Druids were far more a clergy than Druidism was a religion; but it was an organized and a patriotic clergy. It was especially on this account that they exercised in Gaul an influence which was still existent, particularly in Northwestern Gaul, at the time when Christianity reached the Gallic provinces of the South and Centre.
Thus the very name of Druidism is a proof of the Celtic addiction to tree-worship, and De Brosses, as a further evidence that this was so, would derive the word kirk, now softened into church, from quercus, an oak; that species having been peculiarly sacred.
The last armed struggle of Druidism, and the only invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Saxons, are also events of the civil history of the seventh century.
That Druidism, as existing originally in Devonshire and Cornwall, was immediately transported, in all its purity and perfection, from the East, seems extremely probable. Among the sacred rites of the Druids there were none more celebrated than that they used of the misletoe of the oak. They believed this tree was chosen by God himself.
There were two exceptions: Druidism; we have glanced at a possible reason why it was proscribed in Gaul by Augustus; another reason may been that the Druids clung to the memories of Celtic and so anti-Roman great things forelost. The other exception was the first historical world-religion that proclaimed the doctrine, Believe or be damned!
Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the Oriental dreams of metempsychosis that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures.
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