CONSCIOUS LIVING:  THE DRUID AND THE LAND

Reclaiming the Sacred Marriage with the Land

By Todd Covert, Chief Druid of FoDLA

Anyone who spends any significant amount of time looking into reconstructed and traditional European paganisms—such as Druidism—is likely to encounter a concept often labeled “tripartition” of society, along with various ideas as to how this relates to an understanding of ancient religions.  In a nutshell, this is the notion that the cultures of Europe and South Asia speaking languages in the Indo-European family (including the Germanic languages, such as English, and the Celtic languages, among others) seem to exhibit a social organization centering on three so-called “functions.”  These are the “first” or magico-legal function, the “second” or martial (or “warrior”) function, and the “third” or producer function.  Analysis of the myths of these various cultures turns up correspondences between these social functions and various deities:  Odin and An Dagda representing the first function, Thor and the Vedic Indra, the second, and various twin horse lords—among others—the third.

The three “functions” can serve as context for understanding not only ancient cultures and belief systems, but also contemporary issues in the relationships among various parts of a society and between the society and the land in which it dwells.  As we will see, however, times have changed and—especially for modern Americans—a slavish imitation of the ways of ancient cultures may not be ideal.

Uniting all of these functions (which can certainly be thought of in very general terms, for convenience sake, as castes) is the king.  Some ascribe a fourth, kingly, function to the ruler.  Others see the king as the paramount representative of one-half of the first function:  the king being the epitome of the legal current in society, with a figure like a high priest (e.g., an “Archdruid”) holding the magico-religious half of the function.  There is considerable discussion of the idea that the king arises and is elevated from the warrior segment of the society.

Whatever may be the case, in these ancient cultures, including that of Ireland in pre-Christian times, the ruler was very often inaugurated into kingship by a ritual of symbolic marriage with the Land.  Often this involved a form of horse sacrifice that including a symbolic mating of king and beast, with the horse representing the vitality of the Land.  Very often—as in the Arthurian tales—the wholeness and conduct of the king was seen as linked to the fertility of the Land.  In Irish myth, there are numerous indications of the need for the ruler to be wholesome and honorable and of the depth of the tradition of the Land as granting hospitality to the People.  For example, in the tale of the Second Battle of Magh Tuiredh, the unwholesome characteristics of the half-breed ruler, Bres, bring warfare upon the land and Bres’ kingship itself is the result of the disfigurement of the rightful ruler, Nuada.  The tale of the coming of the Gaelic people to Ireland involves negotiations with three goddesses representing the island itself.  This is, in turn, reminiscent of latter-day customs among the Norse peoples in Iceland of appeasing the local land spirits on settling in a new area.

The ceremonial and symbolic ritual mating of the chieftain with the Land—often experienced or understood as a goddess of sovereignty—is especially important.  Many Indo-European cultures, certainly including the Irish, suggest a duality of sorts between the untamed land and the order of the settled community.  This duality manifests in many ways.  Many societies have complex taboos and customs that both link warriors in combat to the frenzy of predatory beasts and suggest that this frenzy is destructive (or at least unwholesome) when brought within the community.  There is a clear link between the secrets of fertility in the land and the adversaries of the Irish deities—the Formorians—in Gaelic myth; the final peace of the Second Battle of Magh Tuiredh partly rests on the passing of this knowledge from the “demonic” Fomorians to the gods.  Even the term “Pagan” finds its roots in a basic division between the “urbis”—the world of the settled town or city—and the “pagus” or outlying rural areas, with the “pagani” being seen as “uncivilized.”

In short, human societies seek order and carve that order out of the seemingly-disordered wilderness.  But it is only by a deep understanding and husbandry of the resources of the Land that societies can endure.  Small wonder, then, that the epitome of social order, the person at the apex of the multi-layered societal “functions,” is ritually joined with the essence of the Land itself.

But what does it mean to speak of a “ruler”—be it “king” or “chieftain”—in a multicultural society?  In modern America, even each of the fifty states are so far from homogenous that it is difficult to conceive of a single “People” represented by a king-like figure who could stand in for all of the community and be joined with the Land.  Furthermore, American culture is deeply pervaded by the sensible rejection of the installation of a king or other such figure at the founding of the United States.

Perhaps we can find the quickest route to a working answer in thinking in terms of the modern concept of “intentional community.”  If as Neo-Druidic Pagans joined together for whatever period of time, we understand ourselves as comprising a community bounded by our intentions to join with and honor the Land and such agencies as might attend it, then we have the opportunity—as did the ancient Celts in their ceremonies of election and inauguration of kings—to set forward a representative who embodies in some way those ideals that unite us.  The seasonal community rituals of FoDLA attempt to evoke this practice and offer it to all who might be interested in considering following the Fellowship’s example by asking the Druid who presides over any such rite to enact a simple prayer and offering that acknowledges and renews our commitment to a healthy and reciprocal relationship with the Land.