Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (16 page)

After the Irish Celts adopted Christianity and became among its most fervent missionaries, Druidism fought a near-hopeless rear-guard battle. Prominent Druids withdrew to remote regions where they secretly spread their doctrine and oral traditions to the few stubborn adherents who sought them out. As time passed, however, the power and influence of
Druids dwindled until they were viewed by common folk as little more than fortunetellers and prophets, descendants of the apocryphal Merlin and his ilk, cursing and conjuring but achieving little beyond a measure of entertainment.

With so little recorded history and such limited achievement, why do Druids occupy any position at all among our grasp of secret societies? The answer lies within the movement's romantic association with installations such as Stonehenge, and the assumption that Druidism encompassed long-forgotten mystical practices and secret occult knowledge. There is, after all, nothing like the scent of lost knowledge to boost a society's status.

The idea that Druids knew something the rest of us do not grew out of an eighteenth-century fascination in England and Scotland with mysticism, often embraced in a playful manner to relieve the tedious restrictions of Calvinism, Lutherism and other movements that assumed anything fun was a sin—or should be. During this period, Freemasonry crystalized as a secret fraternal society, adapting as it did certain elements of the public's erroneous perception of Druid mystical practices. The Masonic use of exotic headwear, among other rites and costumes, was derived from Druidism and various ancient cultures.

Modern Druids bless the rising sun at Stonehenge, which has no connection with Druidism.

There is more mysticism than fact in the common association of the Druids with Stonehenge. Druids may have conducted some sort of ceremony at Stonehenge from time to time, but they were people of the forest, not prancers and dancers on the windswept Salisbury Plain. Besides, historians have pegged the date of the site's origins around 2000 bc, long before any indication of the Druids’ existence. Stonehenge may have functioned as a temple, an observatory, a monument or any of a dozen other purposes. We do not know for certain what it was; we do know that it was surely not Druidic.

Irish culture assimilated many Druid beliefs and values, and their echoes and influences can be found in the poems of William Butler Yeats and the novels and short stories of James Joyce. Several mystical elements of Druidism may indeed represent the stylistic core that distinguishes Irish authors, and mark the reason for their unique impact on English literature. The demise of the sweet-natured Druids at the hands of Romans and Saxons, philistine in comparison, may also represent the wistful root of Celtic literature. Yeats made use of it several times in his poetry, including these lines from “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time” that sum up all the gentle Celtic sadness as effectively as several choruses of “Danny Boy”:

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandaled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.

Druids appear several times in Joyce's
Ulysses
, although with less reverence and more boisterousness than Yeats's melancholy
references. When Stephen Dedalus tells Buck Mulligan he had just been paid, Mulligan rejoices.

Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the Druidy Druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns. He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent….

These and many other references to Druids in Irish literature and folklore help fuel speculation that Druidic influence extends down through the ages, perhaps even to today. Like the Masons encouraging the concept of a link with the Templars, many of those who claim a connection with Druid beliefs encourage the idea that the ancient movement continues to operate in secrecy, with a vague aura of conspiratorial activities. Their efforts serve to provide a patina of mystique to a faction that has had more influence than substance, and been composed of more fable than fact.

To appreciate the breadth of Gnosticism, imagine a private club whose rules and activities are equally attractive to both Hugh Hefner and Mother Teresa. If you are able to grasp the concept of such an organization, you can begin to plumb the deeper teachings and contradictions of the ancient Gnostics, if not their contemporary supporters.

Their name derived from the Greek
gnosis
, meaning
knowledge
. (The “
G
” is silent:
NO-sis
.) In this context, the definition is inadequate;
insight
or
enlightenment
are perhaps more accurate. Knowledge suggests a factual, intellectual aspect rejected by adherents of Gnosticism, who believe that our true spiritual nature can be found only by looking within ourselves. Both our bodies and the material world in which we live are evil because they were created by the malicious God of the Old Testament. Our pure inner spirits, in contrast, are the product of a higher and more abstract God, as revealed by Christ. Thus the goal of Gnosticism can be described as a means of freeing our pure spirits from the enclosure of our evil bodies.

Beyond this central core of their conviction, little about the Gnostics can be easily established, including their origins. Some sources claim they pre-date Christ, some claim they were contemporary with the first Christians, and some identify Gnosticism as a reaction against many of Christianity's firmly established tenets. A number of clues and a handful of facts exist to define the group's beliefs, structure and influence over the past 2000 years.

Gnostics, like followers of all religions, believe the world is imperfect; Gnostics go further by insisting it is also evil. Like Buddhism, Gnosticism acknowledges that life is filled with suffering. In fact, suffering is inescapable. All life on earth survives by consuming other life, and mankind consumes more than its share. Beyond its basic needs for survival, mankind inflicts multiple layers of suffering on a grand scale via wars, and on an individual scale through insults and betrayals. Along with suffering come injury and death as a result of natural catastrophes like earthquakes, floods, fires, drought, pestilence and disease.

Yet the human spirit, according to Gnostic teachings, is pure. Only the matter that surrounds it, including the body it occupies, is flawed. By that measure, life is absurd and only by fleeing this imperfect world can the spirit find true contentment.

The concept of pure spirits residing within an evil world represents an about-face from traditional Christian principles, especially as articulated in Genesis. The Old Testament's initial tale describes a perfect paradise in which two near-perfect people dwell in bliss until the arrival of the serpent persuades them to contaminate it and themselves with sin. Gnostics would argue that the world was already evil before the arrival of the serpent, an issue that did not endear them to Christians.

This core concept of an evil world launched a remarkable schism in Gnostic beliefs and practices, producing extremes of both ascetic and licentious sects, leading to that opening analogy of Hugh Hefner and Mother Teresa under the same philosophical umbrella. Surprisingly, a rationale exists for both points of view.

Ascetic Gnostics, which included followers of Saturninus and the Manicheans, considered the human body as evil matter and tried to divorce themselves—or more correctly their pure spirits—from its actions as much as possible. Separating soul from body, in their view, was the first stage in elevating the spirit to ultimate salvation. They believed matter, as exemplified by the body, was sinful, and distancing themselves from all matter strengthened and purified their spirit. As a result, these Gnostics avoided foods that provided anything beyond mere sustenance. Marriage was sanctioned because it united two pure spirits, but nuptial intercourse was forbidden, a decision that no doubt produced much frustration and no offspring, since children were considered merely the reproduction of yet more evil matter.

This same philosophical foundation pointed licentious Gnostics, such as the Ophites and Carpocratians, in the opposite direction. If pure spirits or souls are alien to this evil world, these sects believed, then it didn't matter what they did here on earth. To these Gnostics, the concepts of sin and immorality were rarely addressed; by definition, everything the soul did was pure and everything the body did was evil. Since both were separate entities, why worry about the ramifications?

This led to a few startling tales of Gnostic activities, many of them challenging credulity, and some reminiscent of the scandalous lies spread about early Christians. In the case of the Gnostics, the Christians themselves may have been the instigators instead of the recipients.

Promiscuous intercourse was attributed to this group of Gnostics who, having sanctified each other and been redeemed, were now above the law. “All the earth is earth,” they were taught, “and it matters not where one sows, as long as one sows.” About 2000 years later this was paraphrased into “If it feels good, do it.”

The Ophites, a group of Gnostics whose name honored serpents, based their entire communion service on the presence and activities of a snake. The service began by attracting the
reptile from the safety of its
cista mystica
and encouraging it to slither among loaves of bread, which were later eaten. Members were required to kiss the snake, which was either very tame or well drugged, on the mouth before falling to their knees and worshipping the animal.

Followers of the Gnostic sect led by Carpocrates were granted even more license and encouragement. Carpocratians believed that the purity of the soul could not be contaminated and made evil, any more than a pearl could be debased by dropping it in the mud; at its center, the pearl would always remain a pearl. Based on this libertine view, the soul ought to experience everything available to it in this world. Carpocratians shared their sexual partners and took part in massive orgies, although males were instructed to practice
coitus interruptus
not as a method of birth control but as a means of collecting semen to be consumed as the body of Christ, as was menstrual blood. Recruitment methods of the Carpocratians were basic and no doubt successful in attracting male followers. The most beautiful female members were encouraged to offer themselves as bait to draw adherents, and a related group formed a male elite called Levites who practiced open homosexuality.

Should a woman become pregnant as a result of these activities, the fetus would be aborted, pounded to jelly in a mortar, mixed with honey and spices, and eaten by sect members, a practice chillingly reminiscent of the most lurid fables associated with early Christians.

This kind of practice represented an extreme, perhaps even mad, branch of Gnostic belief. Larger and more respectable was the sect led by Simon Magus, a charismatic scholar who fills an interesting role in at least one biblical tale that provided an eponymous definition in English.

Born in the Samarian town of Gitta, Magus was raised in Alexandria, the great intellectual center of the civilized world in its time, where he received a first-rate Greek education and was baptized by Phillip. He also reportedly acquired enough skill in Arabic-Jewish magical medicine to make himself invisible, levitate
himself at will, and metamorphose into an animal, or at least persuade his audience that he had.

A follower of John the Baptist, Simon gathered his own disciples around him and was viewed, not surprisingly, as a potential competitor to early Christian leaders. He appears in the New Testament (Acts 8: 9–24) in a less than favorable light when he encounters the apostles Peter and John and attempts to purchase spiritual powers from them, providing the source of our word
simony
, the practice of trafficking in spiritual powers or items.

Peter's rebuke (“Your money will perish with you, because you have thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God.”) may have motivated Simon to launch Gnosticism, as some followers claim. If he didn't actually initiate the religion, he is acknowledged as the inspiration for a faction whose members were labeled, not surprisingly, Simonians. In Simon's view, shared by most Gnostics, the true God possessed a female aspect, a Mother God sometimes referred to as “Sophia” in recognition of Her wisdom.

This attitude angered early Christians, but it was not quite as revolutionary as it appears today. The Hebrew version of the Old Testament actually identifies the Spirit of God as
Ruwach
, a feminine gender. Simon would have been aware of this reference, and perhaps used it as a stepping stone towards new interpretations of the nature of God. As often occurs when freethinkers challenge a dominant authority, it wasn't what Simon proposed as much as the way he proposed it.